Prismatic Prophesy
by NovaFloresca
Summary: Beneath the shadow of the Skyreach Project, long-held grudges are being pursued, and long-held debts are coming due. And when the day of reckoning comes, those who wished to see its arrival may find that getting what they wanted is the greatest curse of all. Part III of the Causality Loop series.
1. Nightfall

**PRISMATIC PROPHESY**

**Episode 1 : Nightfall**

_I hate this place. I _hate_ this place. I hate this _place._ I hate_ this _place. There, that should cover all the bases._ Saya Browning sat back and began idly toying with her hair, propping up her head with one hand in an attempt to at least feign interest in the proceedings of Class 3-1 of the Middle School Division of the Uminari Central School System. It had been four weeks since Saya had been enrolled at Uminari Central, but that had been more than enough time to make up her mind on the matter.

_Having to move to a new city and a new school would be bad enough. Having to take a bunch of extra tests because this school enrolled in the Skyreach Advanced Placement and Annoyance System would be bad enough. Having to be stuck in the same homeroom with Arisa Fucking Bannings and her little band of hopeless optimists would be bad enough. But all three at once? What kind of bad karma do I have on my head to deserve all this?!_ Just thinking about the sparky blond girl was enough to set Saya's blood to boiling, and she caught herself turning instinctively to glare at her most-hated classmate. Saya forced herself to look away, tugging on her red-gold locks to pull her head back towards the front of the classroom. _Whew. Glad she didn't notice me, or it would be another lunchtime shouting match. Or worse yet, she'd sic the other two on me! Arisa is bad enough, but at least I can fight her. Shizuka and the other one . . . uh, Something-or-Other, Takamachi? Those two will just ask me "what's wrong" again, as though they could fix anything._ Saya refocused her attention towards her homeroom teacher once more, but the day's business had another rude shock in store for her.

"Class, we have a new student transferring in today. Please do your best to make her feel welcome." The classroom door slid open, revealing a sight that put Saya on edge once more. _Oh, great, another blond!_ The girl was soft-spoken, polite, and cheerful, all qualities that made Saya despise her immensely. _Fate Haralown, huh? Move over Alicia, I have a new least favorite person in this room!_ As she observed the new girl, Saya made a short, stabbing gesture with her hand, fingers split in a V. When she noticed what she was doing, Saya quickly shook out her hand and sat on it, glancing around quickly to see if anyone had seen her. _Damnit, I'm spending too much time around Ryusei!_ That thought made Saya shudder- Ryusei Date was the closest thing to a "friend" she had made so far during her time at Uminari, and that wasn't particularly close at all; Ryusei was a hopeless mecha-phile and chuunibyou, and the gesture Saya had inadvertently picked up was his way of miming the snap-open-and-fire motion of a _Lion_'s railgun. While the thought of unleashing one of the three-meter-tall Armored Frames on some of the more annoying of her classmates warmed Saya's heart, there was a small problem, in that the Lions were the property of the Divine Crusaders, and so if anyone saw her do it, they might accuse Saya of having sympathies for the terrorist organization who had sworn to destroy the Skyreach Project, or worse yet, they might mistake her for a nerd.

_I HATE THIS PLACE!_

* * *

Lunchtime was, as usual, no better than being in class. Saya reflexively headed for the most secluded corner of the school grounds that she could get to in reasonable time, so as to hopefully avoid any annoyances for a little while. There were two problems with this strategy; the first was that being a creature of habit meant that her "friends" knew where to look for her, and so not a minute later Ryusei came trotting up to Saya's hiding spot. The second problem was that Ryusei was about as stealthy and circumspect as an elephant wearing bells. And that meant that anyone else who had a problem with Saya needed only to look for the pot of gold hair at the end of the robot-nerd rainbow. Sure enough, Saya spotted just such a problem striding over not five minutes later.

"Ryusei, you wouldn't happen to have one of these 'turbolion'-"

"_Guar_lion," Ryusei corrected, with the connoisseur's disdain for the ignorant masses.

"Right, whatever. Do you have one, a real one, on hand by chance?" Saya asked, trying to drag the conversation back to a relevant point.

"Hah, I wish! It looks like they're being issued to squadron leaders only. The profile and pics just dropped today, I think they've only even been deployed for the California raid."

"Figures. Looks like I'm doing this the hard way," Saya said with a sigh, before stuffing the rest of her jam bun in her mouth and popping up to her feet. _Hotaru Hikaru, now she is my least favorite person in the whole school! At least, I think she's a she- wears a boy's uniform and has a face to match, but she goes to the girls' bathroom and she didn't curl up and fall down when I kicked her between the legs last week. _"Go away, Hikaru. Maybe you're not tired of having your face beat concave, but I can't afford to get in another fight, so don't tempt me."

"Very funny." Hotaru scowled at Saya. "Let's take this off-campus where I don't have to let you win, see how things go then."

"Uh-huh. Keep on dreaming, Hikaru." Saya rolled her eyes. "Besides, there's only 20 minutes left for lunch, it'd take too long to get off the grounds and back." When Hotaru failed to take the bait, Saya frowned. "So what do you want then, if not another beating to make your face look prettier?"

"The winds of La Gias are blowing," said another voice, and Saya resisted the urge to bang her head against a tree trunk. Instead, she turned around, and sure enough, there was Maribel Hearn, the _chuuni_ who somehow managed to make it clear to the 3rd year of high school without being locked in a padded room for her delusions. "And she feels it too," Maribel added, nodding to Hotaru. Saya noticed that the green-haired girl glared up at Maribel, but didn't exactly say anything about it. _Great, now they're sharing their delusions. Just what I need._ Instead of investigating that worrying line of though, Saya instead decided to lash out at a convenient target.

"Lost hold of the leash again, Renko?" Saya grumbled at the newest arrival to the impromptu garden party. Renko Usami was the only other member of the Ghost-Sealing Club along with Maribel, and about the only person on campus who could deal with the other girl's delusions for any length of time, though Saya failed to see what Renko was getting out of the deal.

"Pehaps, Browning-san, you may wish to try being polite to others once, if only to surprise them." Renko replied.

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Saya waved off the complaint. _And maybe people could try being nice to me for once? All I wanted to do was eat lunch without any crazy people around, and now I'm one shy of a perfect hand. Oh no . . ._

Sure enough, Saya's karmic burden manifested itself in the form of yet another arrival- Ranko Kanzaki. This girl was the black sheep of the Uminari Central Middle School Division 3rd Year class; quite literally, in fact, as Ranko had gone so far as to dye her uniforms all in black and then adorn them with petticoats and ruffles, chains, beads, and other embellishments. Contemplating the girl's unusual adornments made Saya shudder; she had the misfortune of having Ranko in her P.E. Section. Ranko attached mystical significance to all the trinkets she wore, but two stood out far above the others- the red ribbons she used to tie up her silvery-white hair in twintails and the gold-clasped red gemstone she wore on a chain around her neck. It wasn't the trinkets themselves that Saya had a problem with so much as the fact that after showering, Ranko made sure to reattach the ribbons and chain before putting any of her other clothes on.

"The winds of La Gias are blowing," Ranko said, by way of greeting.

"What, did 'good afternoon' get retired when I wasn't looking?" Saya grumbled.

"Soon will the Witching Hour be upon us. It is important that all who know the curse of Nemesis stand ready."

"Uh-huh," Saya replied, before returning to the more important task of scarfing down as much food as she possibly could before it was time to head for her next class. Having the bell go off just as she reached for her lunch box came almost as a relief to Saya. _At least something around here is reliable. Reliably annoying!_

* * *

However, when Saya got seated for her first class of the afternoon, Applied Sciences, she discovered that she had brought something else with her from lunch; a dose of paranoia. This manifested in the form of suspicion, directed at the teacher standing up at the front of the class. _Next thing I know,_ _Professor Shirkawa will turn out to be a spy or somesuch. Yeah right!_ Saya shook her head, hoping to rid herself of the strange thoughts that she had been infected with. To be sure, the Professor (as he insisted on being called) had plenty enough of his own personal quirks, as well as a "tall dark stranger" air about him that could have invited suspicion. _But come on! He doesn't push any kind of agenda, he doesn't sneak around digging into things late at night (which already puts him ahead of half the students!), and his classes are actually interesting. Interesting, hah, the textbooks are learning _from_ us rather than teaching us!_ That was the beauty (or horror, depending on the student's point of view) of being enrolled in a Skyreach Partner School- students and faculty alike were drawn from all across the world, bringing with them a multitude of exotic talents.

_It'd be nice if more of them were talented instead of just exotic,_ Saya thought, staring across the classroom. It was her considered misfortune to share a section of Applied Sciences with Hotaru. _At least there's no lab today, so I don't have to worry about glass whizzing over my head at ludicrous speed. Again._ Saya shivered; somehow the green-haired tomboy was making decent grades in the course, but it sure didn't show in her lab prep; barely a week went by without Table 4 blowing some bit of their lab apparatus to hell and gone, though if she had been in a charitable mood, Saya would have admitted than none of the eight groups in the section still had all the original equipment that they had been issued a month ago.

All too soon, however, the class ended, and with it the school day. Saya stuffed her things back into her bag and headed for the door, dejectedly. Classes aggravated her, but home both aggravated and bored Saya, so all things considered, she preferred being in school. _"Home", such as it is,_ Saya frowned down at her shadow, leading the way. It had been Saya's parents' wish that she go to one of the Skyreach schools, well, technically speaking; Saya had been orphaned when she was little enough to not really remember her parents. In fact, it had been the orphanage administrator who told Saya about her parents' love for learning and enlightenment, and how it would be fitting to their memory that she go to Uminari. _They probably just wanted me gone,_ Saya thought, not for the first time. _Ah, damnit, I suppose I should cut Hotaru some slack. At least there's only the one of her here. I got in a lot more fights at the orphanage._ Determined to hold her grudge for just a little bit longer, Saya clenched her teeth and strode for home as fast as she could without actively shouldering any of the other students out of the way.

Due to her status, Saya was housed in a "residential" block instead of one of the student dormitories. This had its advantages, as the residential suites had their own kitchen and shower, and didn't close for breaks, but it also came with some disadvantages; specifically, neighbors. More specifically, one specific neighbor, who also happened to be an orphan. This girl called out to Saya cheerfully and waved at her, receiving neither greeting nor wave in reply.

_Yeah, yeah, smile and wave, fuck you too, Hayate Yagami. What is it with people whose names begin with 'H' being a problem? I could be all happy-go-lucky too if I had minions to cater to my every need. _The thought drew an unconscious wince out of Saya._ That's uncalled-for and you know it; she's got "minions" because she's stuck in a wheelchair and can't hardly move even with it._

_Also . . . what does a girl have to do to have a decent sulk around here?!_ Saya entered her abode just long enough to set down her bookbag and change into more comfortable clothes, before exiting in the same hurried stride as before and pulling out her phone. "Yo, Ryusei! Get down to the bus stop, we're going to the arcade!" Without pausing for an answer or even giving the impression that there was a choice, Saya mashed the end key and pocketed the phone, and then she made for the appointed meeting place as well.

* * *

Hayate watched her neighbor go by and made a little indistinct sad sound at her passing. "You know, we should introduce Vita-chan to that girl. I think they'd make great friends." Hayate mused, which drew a somewhat pained grunt from the woman who was pushing her wheelchair.

"And what makes you say that, mistress?" Signum frowned down at her charge; she loved Vita as a sister and comrade-in-arms, but Signum couldn't imagine a meeting between the acerbic little Knight of the Hammer and the equally sour Saya ending any way other than with the latter's brains splattered all over the wall when Vita brought her signature weapon out to play.

"Well, they could take turns scowling at the whole world and everything in it," Hayate replied with a giggle.

". . . indeed," Signum replied, stifling her own laugh behind her hand.

"Speaking of Vita-chan, is she going to be home for dinner tonight, or is she . . . out?" Hayate asked, a trifle sad once more, which made Signum swallow hard before replying.

"I'm sure she will call if she won't be able to make it home in time," Signum replied, diplomatically. _I'm sorry, mistress. I know you don't like our mission, but it is the sworn duty of we, the Wolkenritter, to serve you by completing the Book of Darkness to which you are bound. Incomplete as it is, it is hurting you, and that hurts _us _worse than any of the deaths we've suffered over the many years._

* * *

"What the shit is _this?_" Saya cried out, her voice cutting across the noise of the arcade like a sword-stroke. Ryusei turned reluctantly from where he had been waiting in the queue for the _Call of the Crusade_ machine, just installed that week and sporting hour-long lines from minute one, and went to see what was the matter. _It's not like she's my girlfriend or anything . . . but I'd feel bad if there was an actual problem._ Deep down inside, Ryusei knew he should probably be more conflicted about the newest, most popular game in the arcade; _Call of the Crusade_ was essentially a DC marketing tool, part of their slick and highly invasive media campaign. _But . . . it's so cool! With the full-motion body rig and the 3-D holographic display and . . . really, how much can a few Y100 coins really help them out, anyway? Besides, it's not like they're trying to glorify their actual battles!_ Taking one last look back to reassure himself, Ryusei nodded; in the holotank, the player currently locked in to the motion-control rig was smoking down wave after wave of . . . _things,_ there was no good way for Ryusei to describe them, just throbbing nightmare shapes that poured out of the sky. Nothing like that prefectural police department up north that had their own Armored Frames. The "crab-suits" (as the _Crusader's Weekly Online_ called them, since their operators hadn't seen fit to give out a name for the world to use) were heavy, ungainly and slow, but at least they were solid, and real, and didn't look like a glitch in reality itself. _Maybe I don't want to play that thing just yet. Looks like the holotank isn't dialed in quite right. And I'd look stupid, upchucking all over the console._

Following the wary looks back to their source, Ryusei found Saya standing in front of _her_ favorite game; the DDR machine. At that moment, Saya was winding a finger in her hair, which was a sign she was about to have a serious meltdown. Ryusei didn't know exactly what would happen if Saya ever managed to tear out one of her red-golden locks that way, but he expected the carnage to rival a _Godzilla_ movie. "So, what's wrong? Did somebody break it?"

"No, _worse_! Some fucker knocked down all my high scores!" Saya fumed. "Look!" Ryusei did as commanded, and sure enough, the top 10 scores were all one tag, and it wasn't Saya's.

"Huh. I wonder who this 'red' person is?" Ryusei asked, reading the tag.

"Well, when I find out, I'll let you know, after I break their neck! Gah!" Saya mimed strangling someone as she spoke. "Anyway, you might want to find something to keep you busy for a while. It's going to take all the damned night to shove these tags off." Looking to the top of the list for her first target, Saya recoiled once more. "And whoever it is has no taste to boot! Choujuu Gigaku, are you fucking joking here?" Shaking her head and growling, Saya stomped down on the "start" button and began her self-appointed quest. Meanwhile, seeing that Saya was under control if not exactly calm, Ryusei wandered off to see how long the line had grown.

BGM: Poplica* - Love. - "P-Rhythm Players"

A minute into the song, the little voice in Saya's head that counterbalanced her caustic side decided, while she may still not like the song that her mysterious adversary chose, it was at least a worthy challenge. Or possibly a bit more- on the top setting, the song didn't contain any gallops or stop-and-start tricks, just a nonstop waterfall of layered steps that had Saya sucking down great gulps of air to stay on her toes, and as soon as the last note rolled past, she sagged back against the grab bar at the back of the pad, too beat for the moment to even see where her score had landed. It was at that point that Saya discovered she had acquired an audience, one that was lightly applauding her.

"Hah, not bad, Goldilocks!" said the newcomer, who Saya now noticed was a girl with unruly red hair, dressed in a rather shabby combination of faded teal hoodie and denim shorts. "Try a little harder next time and you might beat me!"

"Yeah- Well- I- Shoulda- Warmed up- First-" Saya panted. "Also, come here- I promised that I'd- strangle you- when I found you . . . but I don't think I can move just yet."

"Hah, nice try!" replied the mystery girl, smirking. She then produced a packet of Pocky from inside her jacket, shook out a stick and nipped it from the pack before motioning to Saya. "Want one?"

"Uh . . . sure." Saya reached out and grabbed a stick, inspecting it for signs of corruption before eating it. "So, now that you're here, who the actual fuck are you, and how do you have time to wipe out my scores during the daytime? You can't be older than 15."

"Try 17."

"Nuh-uh."

"Oh yeah. Just one of the many perks of being me. C'mon, let's go find your buddy. I want to talk to both of you."

"Okay . . ?" Saya replied, dubiously. "Sure, why not, it's not like today hasn't been entirely weird front to back, let's not break that winning streak!"

"Yep. And it's about to get weirder." Saya turned to ask what that meant, but she was interrupted by Ryusei, who just shouted "_Whoa!_" when he saw the two girls.

"You're the Bloody Angel! What are you doing here?"

"I- what?" the redhead asked as Saya barked out the same question.

"The _Bloody Angel_, the enemy ace who struck down five Armored Frames in a single battle!" Ryusei replied, far too deep in shock to keep from fanboying all over the floor.

"Whoa, hold up there Champ, 'enemy' ace?"

"Well, yeah, that's what it says in _Crusader's Weekly._ You guys don't have a fanzine, so . . ."

"Yeah, I suppose that's true (if not the freaking point)," the girl replied. "For right now, how 'bout you call me Kyoko instead?" Kyoko asked, receiving nods from both her charges.

"Kyoko, right. I'm Saya, and this is Ryusei. Now that introductions are handled, do you want to start making something make sense?!"

"Can do, but we're a little pressed for time, so do you mind talking about it in the car?"

"No! I'm not going any-fucking-where until you explain what's about to happen that you're so worried about-" Saya snarled, only to be cut off by an air raid siren.

"Well, _that_, for starters!" Kyoko replied. Without breaking stride, or her insolent grin, Kyoko took out her phone and flipped it open, punching a speed-dial button. "Yo, Sparky, I found 'em. Making the extract now. You might want to get your stuff together and get ready to leave too, before the fit hits the shan."

Outside, downtown had turned into a veritable catastrophe as the DC raid churned the throngs of afternoon amusement-seekers into a panicked human tsunami. Overhead, waves of Armored Frames swooped and slashed, occasionally pummeling a ground target with missiles or railgun fire. Kyoko was the first to notice the problem.

"God_damnit!_ There's no dropships!" Kyoko swore, shaking a fist at the heavens.

"Uh, isn't that a good thing?" Saya asked, her acidity boiled away by the very real crisis.

"Not in the slightest. It means they're not here trying to stop _us_ from getting _you_, which means that one, we just blew the cover off an op that took months to set up, and two, somebody's got save all these idiots from themselves. Get back inside, find something sturdy to hide under, and wait for me, you got it?"

"What? Hell no, I'm not waiting around here-" Saya started to shout, but she was cut off by Kyoko grabbing a fistful of her shirt and hauling the younger girl right off her feet.

"Get. In. The. Building. Now!" Kyoko dropped Saya to her feet, and Ryusei dragged the pale-faced girl off toward the arcade. _Now for the hard part. _Kyoko nodded to herself, seeking out an alleyway secluded enough for what she needed to do. As she did so, she sank deep into the empathic link. _Guys, we've got real trouble down here. Peachie, wake up Three-Eyes and get the crew moving. We're gonna need some Centipedes down here in a hell of a hurry. Blueberry, I'm going active in just a minute, some fire support would be lovely._

* * *

The operational security protocols used by the DC's raiding parties were extremely thorough, maybe even paranoid. Among the measures employed was a roster-randomization system which had pilots being assigned to their squadrons and squadrons assigned to their taskings only after the Armored Frames were aloft and the launching platform had re-submerged. In some cases, the system even provided multistage orders, shifting a squadron's destination in midflight or bouncing them back to the _Orcus_ itself. _So why is it that I always seem to end up flying with the Shooting Star herself? _mused Lieutenant Sleigh Presty. Nicknames were semi-common within the DC for their veteran pilots, and most were well known to the wider community as part of the Crusaders' media blitz. Pilot Officer Ibis Douglas was _not_ one of the elite, however, and her nickname wasn't published in the _Weekly_, for it was one of the few not bestowed as a token of esteem; rather, the name came from the fact that, much like a meteorite, Ibis usually returned to earth in an uncontrollable plummet, trailing fire and bits of her Lion behind her.

Thus, when one of Sleigh's squadron burst into flaming pieces and fell out of formation, she already had a suspect in mind. "Goddamnit, Douglas, can't you even keep it together in level flight?!" Sleigh barked, banking her Guarlion to get a sighting on where the wreckage landed and determine whether it was worth calling for an evac crew.

"_H-huh?"_ came Ibis' reply over the comm, and then Sleigh actually looked up at her HUD and saw that it was actually Diamond 3 who was down. "Okay, what the hell is going on here?" Sleigh growled into the comm, and then she received her answer in the form of a crimson flash that made her blood run to ice. "All call, this is an all-call for Crusaders in Uminari OA, enemy unit sighted! The Bloody Angel is here!"

* * *

Kyoko hit the roof of a major building just long enough to reorient herself before making another thrust-assisted leap to slash at Sleigh's panic-stricken Diamond Squadron. The maneuver looked a bit like a cat trying to leap for a bird, but in this case, the cat was winning as Kyoko loosed her scorpion spear to pull down another of the enemy AFs. This time, however, Kyoko didn't land unmolested, but instead she was followed down by a pair of missiles snap-shot in her direction by Sleigh. As soon as she touched down, Kyoko spun and lashed out with her spear once more, slicing the incoming warheads apart before they could connect, and then she was off in a dead sprint before any more ordinance could come her way. The blooming cracks of electrolasers dogged Kyoko's heels, earning a grudging measure of praise from the so-called "Bloody Angel". _Okay, give that one credit, those bug zappers are starting to become a problem!_

If Ibis could have heard Kyoko's praise, she would have hung her head with embarrassment, because she hadn't gone for her Lion's rapid-firing antipersonnel weapon on account of any sort of strategy. Rather, in her excitement, Ibis had forgotten which fingering triggered the railgun and so she got her secondary weapon instead, but now that she was committed, Ibis stuck to it, keeping the weapon trained on Kyoko until the capacitors went dry. Following standard procedure, Ibis then hauled skyward, clearing the lane for her teammates to make their own firing runs while her weapons regenerated. _Hey, maybe I can even get a missile lock on her or something . . ._ Ibis looked down at her target, feeling optimistic.

Ibis' hopes were dashed a moment later, when Kyoko turned to face her pursuers. _Okay suckers, get ready to dance!_ Grinning fiercely behind her faceplate, Kyoko pounded her fists together, causing the links of her spear to attach themselves to her forearms, three and three. In this configuration the rods worked to channel her magic, which Kyoko had used in her very first AF battle to bludgeon her opponent utterly senseless. Today, however, Kyoko chose to stay true to the name the DC had bestowed upon her, and so she rocked the heavens with bloody crimson bullets.

Diamond 5 was caught in the middle of his attack run, took a double dozen hits in just over a second, and evaporated, and just behind him, Sleigh was tagged with a handful of shots as well, her heavier Guarlion weathering the blows better, but still she staggered up to altitude with amber warning lights glaring at her. And Ibis . . . _well, at least I'm familiar with this part of the game,_ thought Ibis as she entered something best described as a "semi-guided fall". Being higher on the field had only made things worse for her, as instead of catching Kyoko's shots on her glacis, the danmaku had torn up the legs of her Lion, which snuffed out the EM Floater Field that was keeping her aloft.

Sleigh swore profusely as she watched her squadron come apart around her, and let her displeasure be known by triggering off a full salvo of everything she had on hand. None of the hastily-aimed shots actually hit Kyoko, but they did force her to take cover. As she swung into an evasive pattern while her weapons recycled, a new telltale lit up on Sleigh's screen- her call for help had been heard, and another squadron was entering the fray. But then, before Sleigh could even start filling in her counterpart in Sapphire squadron the situation, the DC reinforcements were blotted from the sky by an overlapping burst of explosions. Sleigh's jaw literally dropped inside her helmet, her mouth open in an unvoiced scream as she struggled to make sense of what had happened. A moment later, the Guarlion's battle computer helpfully informed her that it had recorded a spread of six surface-to-air missiles and gave her a probable location where they had come from.

As the smoke faded, it turned out that one member of Sapphire Squadron had survived, but Sleigh could see he was too numbed by shock to be of any use for the moment- Sapphire 4 was just flying in a standard patrol circle, a reflexive fallback for DC pilots that his quailing mind had seized upon while trying to cope with what had happened, and so Sleigh dived on the new threat herself. _A police car? An entire squadron just got wiped out by the fucking _cops_?_

Sitting behind the wheel of her interceptor, Sayaka watched the vengeful Guarlion coming at her and muttered into her radio, "Kyoko, now would be a real good time to repay the favor." Sleigh saw Kyoko swing back into action, but she discounted the infamous red AF for the moment. _She can't possibly do . . . whatever that was again so soon. You should've stuck to a donut shop, because now I'm going to have roast pig on a spit!_ The Guarlion's railgun arm split open, revealing the launch channel which crackled with stray energy as the weapon prepared to fire.

It was true that Kyoko didn't have the ability to another spray like the one that had done in Diamond Squadron, at least not without tapping far more precious resources . . . but that wasn't the only trick she had up her sleeve. _Homerun sends her regards, asshole!_ Kyoko thought as she hoisted up an RPD machinegun. The trick was that the only part of Homura Akemi's hyperspace arsenal that was completely unique to her Wish was the ability to manipulate the weapons out of time. While that made storage and maintenance considerably easier, with enough focus anyone with a Soul Gem could pocket a weapon for later. Ordinarially this wasn't worth the trouble- the strain on the Soul Gem was at least as much as manifesting the Puella Magi's own magical weapon, and those were usually better. There were exceptions, however, and being sealed inside a bulky, magically-conjured Armored Frame was one of them. The ping of Ophelia's rangefinder array gave Sleigh only a tiny sliver of a second's warning, just enough time for horror to blossom within her before the heavy 7.62mm slugs started slamming home.

"Well, that worked," Kyoko mused as she lowered the gun. Sleigh's Guarlion had tumbled out of her sights at the end of a long, sustained pull, which Kyoko followed up by emptying the magazine on Sapphire 4, sending him down to the dirt in flames as well. "So, Blueberry, tag 'em and bag 'em?"

"_Yeah, as soon as I _find _'em. You didn't happen to get a vector trace on that fancy one as it went down, did you?_" came the reply over the radio. "_Still, that went pretty slick. And you know what that means . . ._"

"Yeah. Reload and get your back to a wall before the other shoe drops, 'cause our luck is never that good!" Kyoko grumbled, but when she went to suit actions to words, she discovered two dismaying facts; firstly, she hadn't 'memorized' any additional ammo for her gun; and second, in the time she was talking with Sayaka, Kyoko's concentration had slipped enough that the RPD had evaporated back into nonspace. "Okay, so there's still some bugs to iron out."

* * *

Kyoko's assessment of the situation was indeed accurate, although she didn't yet know the particulars; there had been one other party present for short battle over Uminari, and shortly after Sleigh was forcibly returned to earth, that party returned home to get the proverbial "other shoe".

"You're home early," Valcyone observed, silently congratulating herself for not jumping straight through the ceiling when Alchemie suddenly stepped out from behind her command chair.

"I'm not staying, just here long enough to whip up an alpha strike for carryout, and I also need you to move in and launch an assault company and some dustoffs." As she spoke, Alchemie budged Valcyone out of the way and began inputting commands into the control console there, sounding 'battle stations' aboard the _Orcus_ and directing the submersible carrier to make a maximum speed dash for land, and generally usurping the hell out of Valcyone's authority.

"Mind, uh, cluing me in?" Valcyone asked, bemused at the abrupt upheaval in the chain of command.

"The Bloody Angel was in town and she disrupted my op. I intend to figure out why she was there and then do something about it."

"Okay. Wait, you're not planning on taking the Time Bomb out on this run are you?"

"No, I'm not that angry. Yet." Alchemie turned on her heel and stalked for the door, but paused just before exiting the chamber. "Oh, and call in the Special Special Snowflakes as well. It's about time those unnatural abominations earned their keep."

"Yes, sir, three bags full, sir," Valcyone replied sarcastically, glaring at the empty doorway.

* * *

"Well, 'bout damn time you guys showed up!" Sayaka called out cheerfully as a second vehicle wearing the livery of the Mitikahara Constabulary's Special Tactics and Active Response unit. The Centipede was STAR's answer to the problem of field logistics; a semi-tractor unit re-engined with a larger version of the PT6 turbine in Sayaka's interceptor, hauling a double set of trailers, each one loaded with a 4-unit Gespenst team, along with spare ammunition and patching kits. The tractor itself was fitted with a powerful comm array and radar to assist the AFs in the field and a point-defense gun system on the roof.

"Yes, well, anything above double the speed limit is just ungentlemanly," Daichi Miki called down from the driver's seat. "So, what do we have?"

"An unknown quantity of DC, we're thinking 5+, have gone to ground in the city. We need to find them, dig them out, and figure out what they're doing here." Sayaka replied. "You didn't happen to pack any Javelins, did you?"

"Trailer 1, I think. Hang on, I'm gonna open shop." Daichi toggled a series of switches on the Centipede's dashboard, which caused the rig to first drop a set of leveling jacks that turned it from a somewhat strange road vehicle into a somewhat strange building; then the sides of the trailers broke open and folded up in some places and down in others, becoming awnings covering the workspace below and ramps for boarding. Eight Armored Frames stood within, four to a trailer, partly disassembled and attached to cradles to facilitate donning.

"Alright, let's get cracking!" Sayaka ran up the ramp into Trailer 1 where, as promised, there was a stockpile of the same kind of missiles she had used earlier to ruin the DC's day. Kyoko boarded the trailer as well, rifling through the AF-scaled weapons racks for something that wouldn't disappear as soon as she stopped using it. With a missile propped over each shoulder, Sayaka looked rather silly tiptoeing down the ramp, but inside she was feeling less than sanguine. _Kyoko, tell me I'm just "seeing" things that aren't really there._

_You mean that twinge in the air, like a Witch is gonna pop up at any moment? Yeah, I feel it too._

_Wonderful._ Sayaka scowled as she rammed one of her projectiles into the interceptor's trunk-mounted launching tubes. _You'd think with them having an Incubator on staff, the DC would know better than to cause _that_ kind of trouble._

_Other way around,_ Kyoko replied, shaking her head as she clipped a new RPD to her armor's maglock. _Now that I'm feeling it, I'll bet all of next week's meals that was the whole point of this attack. They've got two- at least two- Puella Magi to feed, and unlike us, they haven't had a chance to stockpile Grief Seeds._

"That's sick!" Sayaka exclaimed, lapsing back into speech. _Oops! I can't believe they would do such a thing though. It's too awful._

_It's what I would've done, if I was still how I was when you met me. It makes a hell of a mess on our turf- and you can bet they're not trying to farm Witches wherever their secret lair is. Man, fuck Kyubey!_

_Huh? _Sayaka paused at the top of the ramp to turn and look at Kyoko, eyebrow arched.

_Remember how we all used to be able to see through Kyubey's bullshit? Then he became a she and went from "cute but devious" to just "cute and kinda dumb"._

_And now just because Alchemie looks like Nova, we thought she was essentially harmless like Nova. _Sayaka frowned as she loaded another Javelin into her car. Then Sayaka turned to make another trip back, but instead ran straight into a fresh missile, being handed to her by her father.

"Not to make things worse, but I just picked up a bunch of fresh DC signals in town. They just . . . _appeared_ out of nowhere 30 seconds ago." Daichi relayed the grim news along with the armament. Sayaka accepted the burden, then looked over to Kyoko, and she didn't even need to touch the empathic link to know they were thinking the same thing; _I should've stabbed that little bitch when I had the chance!_

* * *

"Okay, I'm sick of waiting. I was sick of waiting about 5 minutes after that crazy bitch told us to 'sit tight', but it's been an hour, and there haven't even been any explosions recently." Saya stood up from where she had been fuming in the mostly-deserted arcade's snackbar. "I'm going the hell home. You coming, Ryusei?"

"Uh- sure." Ryusei frowned as he stood up tentatively. "Although, are you sure this is a good idea? That, er, girl," Ryusei stuttered for a moment, not quite able to use the epithet "Bloody Angel" having met Kyoko in person. "She seemed to want to talk to you some more."

"Yeah, well, she apparently knew me well enough to stalk me and fuck with my DDR scores, she can come find me again if it's so important!" Saya marched up to the front door and yanked it open, striding through like a conquering hero, with Ryusei scurrying after. Once outside, however, Saya received another unpleasant shock.

"So, I didst scry the truth with my shadow-sight. It is good that I have found thee, Saya Browning." Ranko said, stepping out from the shadow of a tree to address Saya, who nearly jumped out of her skin at the surprise.

"Damnit, didn't anyone ever teach you not to do that to people?" Saya cried out, still highly-strung from being scared.

"Apologies, but the way was barred, and I dare not let the minions of the false shadow witness my true strength, so I was forced to wait for some other confirmation, and I wished not to be exposed to the gaze of mine enemies." Ranko made a short bow to Saya, who was nonplussed.

"Right, whatever. I'll pretend that made sense. Why me, though?"

"Whether thou knows it or no, you will have a role to play in the coming struggle against the false shadow. I am duty-sworn to see that none so marked are lost to misfortune."

"Uh-huh," Saya scoffed, but then she recalled something she had heard earlier in the evening. _"we just blew the cover off an op", she said. I dunno if I'd feel better if everybody really _was_ conspiring against me, or if all this shit today has been just the most annoying set of coincidences ever._ "Say, this might sound weird, but you're not like a spy or anything are you?"

"I am as ever, only that which I am required to be." Ranko replied, with a note of some dark emotion.

"_Riiight_," Saya replied. "That's not an answer." Ranko opened her mouth to make some reply, but then a shiver ran down her spine, and Saya shivered along with her- a tinge of something dark and malicious had flooded through the night sky, and it felt like the shadows themselves might be out to get them.

"When I said the Witching Hour approached, I didn't mean it literally," Ranko muttered, gritting her teeth. "Come on, we need to get somewhere safe, and quickly!"

"Now that's the first sensible thing you've said all day," Saya replied, breaking into a jog as the three of them hurried back to campus. Along the way, Ranko pulled out a phone, flipped it open, and started punching in a hurried text, which caused Saya to snicker a bit.

"I just figured you'd do something a little more arcane, like inscribing a message on vellum with a raven's-feather quill and then burning it in a sacred candle to send the message or something." Saya supplied her reasoning when Ranko turned to look at her.

"Don't be weird," Ranko replied, which earned her an open-mouthed stare from Saya and a similar look of disbelief from Ryusei. "Moreover, decisions needed to be made, and there was no time to wait. If the situation declines further, we shall be obliged to quit the city entirely. That means abandoning others who are gifted, but they are not marked as you are. It is what I believe you call 'cutting your losses'."

"Gifted, let me guess, you mean Merry and Renko." Saya replied.

"Good, you are beginning to understand." said Ranko, which caused Saya to blanch.

"I was joking!"

By unspoken agreement, the trio had chosen to stick to secondary pathways, neither willing to risk the darkness of alleys nor step out on to the main boulevard where there was sure to be panic and other problems. However, this choice turned out to be a poor one, as the side street they were following abruptly terminated in a steaming crater where an Armored Frame had crash-landed. Before the party could decide whether to risk scrambling over the junkpile or turning around a flare fell from the sky, illuminating the wreck with harsh light, and a second Armored Frame descended to street level.

"Well, you did say you wanted to see a Guarlion up close," Saya muttered.

"I take it back!" Ryusei replied hurriedly, as the DC unit turned to face them, capacitors whining with rising charge. However, Ranko was no so easily dissuaded.

"Begone from this place, foul thing, or I shall smite thee for thine sins!" Ranko shouted, pulling the chain from her neck and twisting it around her hand so that the large red gem hung before her as a talisman. The Guarlion's posture radiated surprise and irritation, saying with its stance "is this actually happening?", and instead of complying with the demand, the DC pilot brought the Guarlion's railgun into line with Ranko, the forks splitting open in preparation to fire.

"You truly are a fool, and now you shall suffer for it." Ranko held her talisman high. "Beneath the sign of Nemesis, I curse thee; _drown in the Darkness!_" A beam of pure shadow shot forth from Ranko's hand, so dark the night sky seemed bright against it, and where it struck the Guarlion the AF vaporized like butter before a blowtorch. There wasn't even time for the power pack to explode, so quickly was the AF destroyed by the shot. Saya and Ryusei were left gobsmacked by the sudden outburst, which unfortunately left them vulnerable.

"I have had _enough_ of this freaky _shit_ today! I dunno what you did, kid, but try it again, and I'll blow this one's brains out!" Sleigh, who had been waiting near the crash site for rescue, took advantage of the momentary shock to leap out and grab Saya in a headlock, pressing her sidearm up to Saya's temple.

"Don't think that your cowardly actions can save you." Ranko turned to face Sleigh, a slender but fearfully sharp sword suddenly appearing in her hand. "But let me assure thee; harm even a hair on her head, and I will personally bring you the end of the world. But that won't be necessary," said Ranko with a nasty smile. "Because I'm not the only one who wants a piece of you."

A sharp whistle got the attention of everyone present, and Sleigh turned just in time to see a butterfly knife twirl past her face at unreasonable speed before smashing into her gun and knocking it from her hand. This was followed immediately after by a flying kick which bashed into her shoulder, sending tendrils of pain shooting up and down the arm. Saya slipped out from Sleigh's nerveless grip, but she was nearly as dismayed as the DC pilot by the source of her rescue.

"Hotaru?! Don't tell me you're in on all this, too!"

"Yep!" replied a grinning Hotaru, who was favoring Sleigh with the same sort of look that a shark reserved for a bloody morsel. "Now, you wanna see what a _real_ fight woulda looked like? Watch this!" Sleigh took up a combat stance, having been given a good and thorough education on hand-to-hand combat as part of her training, whereas the girl Saya knew as Hotaru sauntered up with arrogance.

Sleigh threw the first punch, but Hotaru scored the first hit, blocking Sleigh's opening strike with blistering speed and then turning the block into a hold on the DC officer's wrist, and then turning that into a pivot point to drive a sidelong kick into the Crusader's ribs. Sleigh hissed in pain, but she twisted free of the block, and even managed to use her superior reach to clout Hotaru on the head in return. The glancing blow did little more than annoy the green-haired girl, however, and she swung in for another round.

Back and forth the two fighters traded blows for about a minute, long enough for Hotaru to see that Saya had realized just how much the other girl had been pulling her punches. With that knowledge secured, Hotaru then cut loose entirely. On the next clash, Hotaru switched up her blocks, using a cross-body punch to drive Sleigh's fist off the line, then Hotaru threw what looked like an abbreviated palm-strike at her opponent's face, and there was a sudden blossom of intolerably bright light in her hand. Sleigh cried out as the sudden illumination dazzled her, and in that moment Hotaru laid a roundhouse kick into the Crusader's head. The blow was enough to knock Sleigh senseless, but Hotaru wasn't finished, pulling her opponent into a grab on the way down and turning it into a throw that saw Sleigh bounce off the pavement and not get up.

"Okay, now that we're no longer in danger . . ." Saya spoke up, after checking to make sure that there actually was no more danger in the immediate vicinity. "Can someone explain to me _what the fuck is going on here?!_"

"Well, in the beginning, there was nothing, and then we had the Big Bang, and then there was everything . . ." Hotaru said, trailing off when she noticed she had three people all glaring daggers at her. "Hey, you never specified!"

"Do you really want to know what is going on?" Ranko asked, in a terrible calm voice.

"Yes! That's it, exactly! Drop the crazy chuuni crap and tell me the straight truth for once!"

"Very well, but it will take some time. I suggest we get indoors at the least."

"Stop fucking with me and tell me something for once!" Saya shouted, grabbing Ranko by the lapels and shaking her out of frustration.

"I am an alien gifted with magical powers by a process invented by my kind, and I came here to locate and destroy another of my kind who has gone rogue and given out these powers to people that shouldn't have them; specifically the person who runs the Divine Crusaders." Ranko said, delivering the news in a dead monotone to Saya, who turned more and more livid with every word.

"_I HATE THIS PLACE!_"


	2. Jawbreaker

**Episode 2 : Jawbreaker**

"Got enough gizmos and gadgets in here?" Reimu asked as she picked her way carefully around a tangle of thick cables towards the dais where the Coordinator of the Border Compact stood. Somehow, the title sounded considerably more impressive than Toyosatomimi no Miko looked, tapping her foot impatiently as she glared at a large display screen. Miko had made a project out of deciphering the Divine Crusaders, and after Byakuren had suggested that she either automate or her notes were going to suffer an unfortunate accident, she had modernized with a vengeance. After some truly shameless poaching of materiel intended for use by the Skyreach Project, the basement of Myouren Temple contained an array of computing power sufficient to rival a major research lab. Miko's machines were also powerful enough to put a serious strain on the only available source of power, which happened to be located beneath Reimu's reconstructed Temple of the Radiant Sun.

"I think so, for the moment anyway. If you're here to present me a bill for utilities, pass it on to Byakuren." Miko smirked. "This was all her idea anyway, let her foot the bill for the moment."

"No bill, yet, but I am here to tell you you're at your limit. Please don't plug anything else into the taps from my reactor."

"Oh?" Miko turned and gave Reimu a expression with just a touch of challenge in it.

"Yeah. Not because I'm being stingy, but because we're right at the reactor's operational limit. That's holding back only the 10% design slack to handle power spikes. 20% more and we start worrying about structural instabilities."

"How bad are we talking?"

"Well, Utusho kinda cringed and took a step back when I mentioned that, and she's more-or-less immune to high-energy plasma and ionizing radiation so . . ."

"So call Nitori and tell her to bloody well optimize something for once, got it." Miko replied. "Have we got that sodding satellite feed yet?" Miko barked, glaring at her assistant.

"No, we don't, and we're not gonna have one, either, Your High-and-Mighty-ness!" Nue Houjuu replied, gnawing on her stylus pen rather than tell Miko what she really thought about the situation, and with the Princess of the Clever Ears, "speaking her mind" meant anything up to and including thinking about it with intent. "Satellites fly in static orbits, remember? Valcyone can read a clock as well as anybody, and once again, she chose a time where there's nothing overhead that we can use." Despite her irritation at the current situation, however, Nue was thoroughly in love with her current job. Originally Nue had been assigned as Miko's assistant as part of her ongoing probation for her troublesome ways, but the chimeric girl craved mystery as a mortal might crave food or air, and she had quickly discovered that there were few things in the modern world with as much mystique, awe, and terror attached to them as a computer hacker, and the rest was history.

"Oh, come on, surely there's _something_ you can find." Miko grumbled.

"Well, yeah, I could grab the launch-detection sat watching North K-reep-a, but I do that and it'll freak enough people out that I guarantee you the muggles will find away past the Border to bust us."

"Bah!" Miko scoffed. "Find yourself missing all the excitement yet?" This question was directed at Reimu, who chuckled and shook her head.

"Even if I was, Remi promised me that if I tried to get back in she would have me spanked and sent to bed without supper."

"Hah!" Miko snorted out a laugh. "And would the Sun Goddess let her number-one worshiper get pushed around like that?"

"Are you kidding? Utsuho offered to do the spanking!"

"Well, seems like those two are coming to terms with each other, then."

"Oh, they've come to terms, alright, and even worked out a time-sharing agreement. I feel conspired against." Reimu muttered.

"Hah! I know the feeling. I love Byakuren, I truly do, but some days I don't wonder if I'd be in less danger trying to arrange a three-way with Flandre and Koishi." Miko replied. Reimu simply grimaced at the thought, which sat about as well as Eirin's anti-rad potion.

* * *

"Signum, do you remember how I wanted everybody home for supper?" Hayate asked, her tone filled entirely with sweetness and light.

" . . . yes, Mistress." Signum replied, still holding her communicator link in hand.

"So you realize that your leaving is the exact opposite of what I hoped for?"

" . . . yes, Mistress."

"Just so we're clear on that point." Hayate pushed her wheelchair over to the Knight of the Sword. "Do you trust those people, who have you at their beck and call?"

"I trust that they're being truthful when they say that a group of troublesome mages is in town, and I trust in the maxims of Ancient Belka, that describe the best form of defense as being 'a sure and victorious assault'."

"Well, then, I'll put supper back in the oven to keep warm. You'll want to have Shamal and Zephira along for your 'sure and victorious assault', I'm certain." To this, Signum merely nodded.

"Oh, and one other thing," Hayate added, catching Signum at the door. "You can expect for there to be a punishment game ready for you, after you return." said Hayate, an impish grin on her face.

" . . . yes, Mistress."

* * *

"Okay, so you're an alien. What does that make her?" Saya asked Ranko, while indicating Hotaru.

"Pissed off, is what it makes me!" Hotaru snapped. "I spent months learning all this school shit for nothing!"

"Well, I hope you weren't paying your tutor anything, because obviously they didn't do a good job-"

"You don't want to go there." Hotaru's eyes flared with anger. "We only have to get you back to HQ safely. You'd be amazed how many parts a Human can lose and still be safe, if you cauterize the wounds quickly enough."

"Do what now?" Saya asked, ignoring the threat for the moment. _It's just another of her stupid boasts. She wouldn't really harm me, not when I'm her "mission". Would she?_ "What if I don't want to leave, huh? I never agreed to go with you in the first place!" Silence reigned for a moment as Saya looked at her "rescuers".

"Well, if you'd prefer, I can give you a quick and painless death," Ranko supplied. Saya felt her jaw drop, because it hadn't been a threat- Ranko had made the suggestion in the same cordial tone that she might use in offering to let a struggling classmate copy her notes.

"Uh, t-that's nice, but . . . Things can't really be that bad, right?"

"Thou witnessed the shiver of despair that shook this place earlier? My kindred created the monsters that hide behind the night in order to further their aims, but they had been banished from this land by our friends. Now they threaten to return, merely as a side-effect of the wickedness worked by the Divine Crusaders. The end of days is upon us." Ranko continued to keep a straight face as she explained, "I should know, for I once held that position."

"Not saying I believe you, but how do we get outta here then? And what about our stuff?" Saya asked, though the latter was mostly for Ryusei's benefit; as she was wearing her arcade clothes, sneakers, and purse, Saya had a good 20% of her worldly possessions with her already.

"Goods take a far cheaper coin to replace that lives." Ranko replied.

"Well, I guess it's a good thing I didn't join that plastic-model club after all," Ryusei chuckled, but he was interrupted by a sudden curse from Saya.

"Club . . . what about Merry, and Renko?"

"Those two weren't placed here by the DC, which is why I didn't seek them out."

"Yeah, but you said they had some kinda gift, right? What are the chances the DC _won't_ sniff them out?"

"Wait, I thought you hated their guts?" Hotaru put in.

"Well, yeah, but I'm not going to let 'em get crunched in my place." Saya replied, scowling. "You got a problem with that?"

"You sure picked a damn inconvenient time to get all noble. Especially seeing as how we don't have any of our big guns on hand." _Big guns?_ Saya wondered, looking over at the steaming scraps that had once been a Guarlion.

"Mayhaps I can rectify that . . ." Ranko pondered aloud, her eyes going unfocused. Sliding one hand up the opposite sleeve, Ranko concentrated for a long moment, then with a tiny "aha!", she withdrew her hand and a fistful of what appeared to be blank playing cards.

"Where did _those_ come from?" Saya and Hotaru both asked, in nearly equal tones of shock.

"Suffice it to say, Rumia-san is going to have some harsh words for me when we get home," Ranko said, blushing very slightly.

"You goosed the Shadowfiend and still managed to get your hand back in one piece?" Hotaru shook her head. "You really are insane!"

"Do I deduce that you wish to decline your share of the bounty, in that case?" Ranko replied, fanning the cards in front of Hotaru.

"Oh _hell_ no! Gimme!" Hotaru reached out and snatched the trio of cards offered to her, rubbing them together as if they were made of gold. "Alright! Now, do we remember where those idiots live?"

* * *

"_Yeah, I felt it too. If it gets any worse out there, I'm going to investigate._" The girl known to the Uminari Central School District as "Fate Haralown" gave a slight giggle as she sent the text message- reading her words rendered on the screen before her reminded her that the plan of action she had just espoused was technically a felony, and technically the girl on the other end of the phone was obliged to turn her in for it. But Fate wasn't worried, for Nanoha Takamachi was the dictionary definition of acting on instinct over orders- a fact to which Fate owed her very life. The only sticking point in the operation would be the Time-Space Administration Bureau officer who had been assigned to monitor Fate's parole; however, Lindy Haralown would only be a problem because she took her duty as Fate's adoptive mother all too seriously, and if she found out, she was likely to hold Fate up for half an hour or more while layering the girl down with every defensive spell she knew.

_She's certainly a better mother than Precia. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true._ A frown crossed Fate's face as she contemplated her "biological" mother. _Precia cared quite a bit for her daughter, so much so that she was willing to clone her and send the clone to round up a Lost Logia device to resurrect her! _That mission had ended badly, if judged strictly on the merits; Fate and Arf, her familiar, had a much different opinion on the matter. _Nanoha saved us, more than saved us . . . ahh crap!_ Thinking of Nanoha derailed Fate's train of thought- she had originally been texting Nanoha for help with homework when the strange phenomenon lit up the skies.

* * *

"So, do we have a plan of action yet?" Kyōko asked, turning to look at Daichi in his White Knight custom armor.

"_Shooting everything isn't a plan?_" Sayaka replied over the comms, drawing a few chuckles.

"Cause if not, somebody put in a special request; seems Sparky and the Oddball left something behind in the dorms and they would appreciate us attracting attention while they go back to get it."

"I think we can do that." Daichi said, drawing his katana and holding it high as a signal to the rest of the STAR officers. "All units, power up and move out!"

Sayaka led the charge, throwing on her interceptor's lights and sirens, just in case the DC second wave weren't aware of their opposition. Almost immediately the threat receiver lit up with hostile signals, which Sayaka cheerfully relayed to the rest of the STAR team. A button on the steering wheel armed the interceptor's missiles and Sayaka quickly selected two likely targets among the incoming swarm, and a second press of the control dispatched a pair of missiles. And Sayaka wasn't the only one shooting- after their debut battle, the Gespensts were issued a single Javelin launcher per squad to help even the odds, and both teams fired as soon as they saw the shots leave the interceptor. Just like in Mitikahara, the DC got to start the fight already in negative points, and that fact had them diving out of the sky like angry bees, boiling with the desire to sting back.

* * *

Alchemie watched the battle from on high, holding on to the railing surrounding her chosen skyscraper's observation deck with a white-knuckled grip, the better to keep from leaping over the side and calling forth her _Personolichkeit_ to punish the impudent defenders. _No, no, mustn't jump in, or I'll be getting called in to help every time a recruit sees his own shadow. Besides, a solution for the problem is already on its way. Or we'll be discovering whether shredded Wolkenritter makes a good popcorn topping later on this evening._

* * *

The opening round of fire from the DC forces made a mess of the pavement but inflicted no casualties, although one Gespenst took a pair of rails through the arm which rendered it unable to fight back. That would change quickly, however, as the airbound Lions swooped down for a second pass. Down low, the DC units superior speed would make them much harder to hit, especially since the STAR officers had learned the hard way that standing still long enough to aim was an invitation for death. _Or we could see if Satori's computer nerds have earned their keep!_ Sayaka decided to put that theory to the test, and the first step was to turn her Interceptor around. This was accomplished with a shrieking, 100kph J-turn that left her facing the circling DC forces while still rolling away from them. Next, Sayaka cycled her targeting system over to 'command' and lit up the Lions. Now the Interceptor's computer was doing all the work, calculating vectors for the selected target and feeding it to the AFs on the ground, who only had to line their guns up with the indicator markings provided and fire.

Round two went to the STAR forces as several Lions were punctured by gunfire and fell, or were forced to break off the engagement due to damage, but at the same time Sayaka cringed as she saw one of the link indicator lights on her comms panel blink and go dark. Combined with another combat-ineffective casualty caused by an electrolaser blast cooking off the rounds for 2nd Squad's missileer, the STAR team was running out of fighting strength as quickly as they were going through targets. Even worse, Kyōko was practically begging to be shot by standing her distinctive suit right out in the open but the DC weren't taking the bait, as they had come to recognize the unique constraints on the "Bloody Angel's" attacks. There were no Lions low enough or buildings high enough for Kyōko to get her spear into play, and so Kyōko's only contribution to the current battle was a spatter of increasingly vile profanity and the occasional unguided squirt of fire from her gun. And then things went from bad to worse, with the change in fortunes being heralded by a scream of terror over the comms followed by a sickening _crunch, _the sound emanating from a Gespent that came hurtling across the battlefield crushed and bent double by some enormous force. Sayaka couldn't help but gawk at the destruction, and she looked to where the wrecked AF came from, expecting to see a vehicle-mounted battering ram, or Alchemie in her monster suit.

What she saw was a girl who looked the right age to be in Charlotte's class, dressed in a heavily-embellished red Gothic dress and matching beret, carrying a croquet mallet. Fiery red braided pigtails completed the look, and for just a moment Sayaka thought that either she was hallucinating, or she was going to need to perform an emergency evacuation of a cosplay kid, and then she locked on to the girl's eyes. In the bright blue depths, Sayaka could see only violence and a smattering of contempt. _Okay, that's trouble. BIG trouble!_ Sayaka thought, pushing the appraisal out on the empathic link. "Damnit! Kitamura, get back!" she called out, trying to warn off the closest of the remaining Gespenst pilots.

Officer Kai Kitamura ignored the warning, but not out of bullheadedness; rather, his experience as a fifteen-year veteran of the Constabulary told him that someone was going to have to try containing the problem until the appropriate assets could be brought to bear, and he said as much over the comm, even as he went to work on the unusual new threat. Not wanting to give the girl a chance for a windup attack, Kai cocked his fist and ignited the Gespent's close-combat weapon, the Jet Magnum. A technological analogue for Kyōko's Jet Phantom maneuver, the weapon consisted of a set of three plasma pistons which gave the Gespent a lightning-edged set of brass knuckles. In test firings, the Jet Magnum proved sufficient to blast a hole completely through a cinderblock wall, or render a car down to scrap, and Kai fired his maneuvering jets at the apex of his swing, bringing him down on his target faster than she expected, too fast for her simply to dodge. _I'm impressed! I didn't think this miserable planet was going to be able to cough up a challenge!_ Vita smiled for just a moment, savoring the thrill of battle for the first time in her current existence

Instincts honed on countless battlefields caused Vita to throw up a shielding spell rather than learn how her physical defenses would handle the Jet Magnum. The _Panzerscild_ spell stopped Kai in his tracks, although the sheer momentum of the attack forced Vita back a step. Kai wasn't going to get another try at breaching the spell wall, however, for Vita swung her mallet around and dealt him a sidelong whack. This was a hurried blow, rather than the full-force shot that had started the battle, so the constable would live to see another day, although the strike shattered the Gespenst's arm and sent him reeling.

"Hey, pick on somebody your own size!" Kyōko shouted, pouncing on Vita with her version of the Gespenst punch. Vita gave her attacker a look of incredulity through the transparent circle of her barrier, which was enough to draw a snort of laughter from Kyōko- Vita had her _Panzerscild _held up almost like an umbrella to block Kyōko's strike, emphasizing the disparity in their respective heights. Before Vita could respond, though, Kyōko boosted backward and launched her scorpion spear to loop under the shield, but the attack only drew a laugh from the little Knight of the Hammer.

"A chain-wielder? Boring!" Vita declared, tossing up a steel ball and then serving it with an overhand smack from the mallet and a cry of "_Schwalbefliegen!_" Kyōko threw herself out of the way of the projectile, noting with some alarm the hole it punched in the concrete, then feinted forward while letting her scorpion spear loose in a trailing strike that was hidden by the mass of her AF. The surprise was all on Kyōko's end though as Vita wound her mallet in the chain links and slammed it into the ground, jerking Kyōko forward into an uppercut that rattled her brain even through Ophelia's helmet.

"Alright kid, playtime's over!" Kyōko snapped, dispelling her AF and throwing herself into the fray once again. Freed from the need for verisimilitude Kyōko cut loose completely, the scorpion spear stretching as she twirled it around for another attack, and this time Vita was caught looking, the pole slamming sidelong into her and flinging her across the street.

_Okay, maybe this won't be so boring after all, _Vita thought as she rolled to her feet, a suspicion confirmed by the sight of Kyōko's spear licking out for her at unreasonable velocity once again. Vita whirled out of the way of the strike, and even managed to smack another handful of ball bearings at her attacker, but Kyōko let her scorpion spear break apart once more, the head carving through space in a sinuous arc that ended with the _Schwalbefliegen _shots being slapped away. Before Vita could follow on with another attack, before her spear had even re-formed, Kyōko pounced, twirling in the air to pull her spear together before stooping on her foe at maximum extension. Once again, Vita had to throw herself out of the path of the attack, which tugged at her hair in an unusual manner as it passed overhead. The reason for the odd sensation came to Vita in scraps- while she had managed to evade the strike, her hat had not, and Kyōko had obliterated the beret in the process of pulling her spear free of where it had embedded itself in the building facade.

"Y-you _beast!_ That was a gift!" Eyes wide with rage, Vita popped to her feet. "Graf Eisen! _Load Cartridge!_"

**Javhol!** came the response, spoken by the weapon itself. A sleeve mechanism upon Graf Eisen's haft slammed forward, energising the head with a charge of pure mana.

_Well, that's new,_ Kyōko mused as she watched Graf Eisen work. Still screaming, Vita stepped forward and began swinging the hammer around, gaining speed from a thruster flaring fire from the head. At the same time, Kyōko grounded her spear, bracing for the incoming attack rather than risk taking her eyes off the furious Knight long enough to clear out of the area. Then Vita released her attack, the momentum pulling her into a broadside swing with a shout of "_Raketenhammer!_" In the instant before the shot hit home, Kyōko felt her blood run cold as she witnessed how the Device functioned- the release wasn't the apex of the attack, but instead Graf Eisen was still consuming mana at an exponential rate, still accelerating after Vita loosed the swing, and so the brutal chisel tip of Graf Eisen arrived well before Kyōko was prepared for it. The shock of the impact was mirrored an instant later by the shock of her body smashing through the wall of the adjacent building, and Kyōko blacked out somewhere in between the two.

* * *

When Kyōko managed to open her eyes again, she discovered that the party had relocated to la-la land for only a few seconds, judging by the quality and quantity of the pain flooding her body, long enough for Sayaka to bolt out of her car, transform, and be in the middle of a ferocious leap that saw her stitching Vita's immediate vicinity with thrown swords. Watching Sayaka in action caused Kyōko to recall the first time she had met the blue-haired girl. _That should have put you out of action for months,_ Kyōko had said after inflicting a blow on Sayaka similar to the one she had just received. _Yeah, a three-month vacation sounds pretty good right now, but I don't expect Funsize the Second over there is gonna let me._ And so, Kyōko gritted her teeth and levered herself to her feet, after checking to make sure that her legs were still actually attached, and then she stepped out of the hole- just in time to see Sayaka get crossed up by the shining silver blade of a second Knight.

"Two against one, it hardly seems fair," Signum remarked as she drove Sayaka back.

"Yeah, well the only fair _I_ know happens in August and sells taiyaki!" Sayaka shouted back, before pulling a Spellcard from her sleeve. "_Crusader Sign ~ Calamity Cross!_"

_I was not informed that they could do this,_ Signum thought as she turned and slashed with her Laevateinn, trying to parry the falchions that assailed her from all sides. The bite of cool air in open cuts brought a frown to Signum's face. _I'd rather not have to have Hayate fuss over me tonight._ "Laevateinn! Load Cartridge, assume _Schlangeform!_" Laevateinn complied, giving Signum the ability to sweep the attacking blades away with its bladed-whip form, but she was barely clear of the Spellcard's effects when Sayaka charged again, her aegis leading the way. A low sweep pushed the serpentine Laevateinn away from her body, and the follow-through saw Sayaka throwing a reversed-grip cut that forced Signum to bend almost double in order to avoid. As soon as she knew she wasn't going to score a hit, Sayaka leaped out of the engagement before Signum could bring her weapon around for another sweep. Signum growled in frustration as she pulled Laevateinn back into sword form, and took off after her opponent.

* * *

Vita hadn't gotten involved in the exchange between Signum and Sayaka; while she was justifiably proud of her power in combat, Vita knew she didn't have the precision to keep from possibly tagging Signum in the battle, and making _that_ mistake never ended well. Now that the battle had turned into an aerial chase, however, it seemed like a good time to join in- but the telltale jangle of chains told Vita that her original opponent was still active. Being the consummate professional that she was, Vita put aside insignificant questions such as "how the hell is that girl still in one piece, let alone able to fight?" and waded in once more.

Kyōko struck first, bursting forward with explosive speed and letting her scorpion spear go wild, the chains singing as she lashed out at Vita, who entwined Graf Eisen within the links and foiled the strike. Vita thrust Graf Eisen down, discarding the obvious feint quickly so that she could move to parry and counter Kyōko's next move, but this time the Puella Magi was a step ahead- as soon as Vita moved her hammer out of line, Kyōko dropped her own weapon and used the opening to wrap her hands around the little Knight's throat and smash Vita's head against the wall.

"Damnit! Break already, you hardheaded bitch!" Kyōko snarled, hauling Vita up to try again. Vita would have quibbled on the "hardheaded" point, as her skull felt somewhat like a cracked eggshell at the point, with her brains serving as the scrambled-in-the-shell eggs, but that would have required an amount of concentration she didn't currently possess, so she settled for action instead.

"G-graf Eisen, _Raketenform!_" Vita choked out, firing the hammer as soon as it had fed upon another cartridge. The sum total of the guidelines for using the powerful Raketenform while holding the hammer in only one hand and without firm footing were simply "_ist verboten_", for reasons which Vita recalled quite clearly even as she did so anyway, but on the whole, the Knight of the Hammer decided that having her arm all but pulled out of its socket and her dress catch slightly on fire from the firing were better than having her brains splattered all over a wall. Likewise, Kyōko decided that abandoning her hold on her opponent was preferable than having Graf Eisen hit her in the temple at speeds approaching Mach 1, so she flung Vita away and dived backward to keep from being hit. Vita let the hammer pull her through a complete turn and then turned Graf Eisen through a loop before her to bleed off the last of the thrust and cover her while she got focused on the battlefield once more, but it appeared the battle had temporarily abandoned her- Kyōko was nowhere to be found. "What the hell?" Vita asked of the empty air, but she didn't much like the hackles-raising answer it gave her.

* * *

"_There it is again. I'm headed to your house unless you have a better place to meet. See you in five._" Fate mashed the key to send the text then snatched up the storage form of her Device, Bardiche, although she didn't activate the magic weapon just yet. _Whatever that was, it's _bad_. Not just acting with a bad intent, like I was at first, but evil right down to the core._ Fate shuddered as she looked out her window at the dead black sky. _And those were air-raid sirens earlier. Maybe it's a coincidence that those DC fanatics attacked here at the same time whatever this is happened, but I sure wouldn't bet dessert on it!_ _I really hoped Nanoha's world was going to be better than this._

Fate yanked open her bedroom door and started to rush through it when she realized there was already someone there, and then she was trying to stop her lunge in time to keep from completely plowing Lindy Haralown over.

"Going out?" Lindy asked, grinning at bit at the near-collision.

"Uh, yeah," Fate replied tentatively, unsure if she should feel like she had been caught at something.

"Well, if you hadn't been I was going to ask you to. I don't like the feeling of whatever this is, and the sentinel left in orbit by the _Asura_ shows a large barrier formed over part of the city."

"I didn't know there was anybody around here that had that kind of power. This is bad," Fate frowned, and started for the front door, when a sudden, sharp pain in the back of the leg. This made Fate yelp, and she took an involuntary half-step, half-leap away from the the source of the pain, but instead it came along for the ride, latched on to her sock. "Ahh! Sorry, Arf, I didn't forget about you, I just didn't want you to be in danger."

"Yeah, well, I've got two things to say about that," said the lupine familiar, once Fate had released the seal upon her so that Arf could return to her humanoid form. Arf balled up a fist and thunked Fate over the head. "That's for forgetting that if you die, I die," Arf stated, and then thunked Fate again. "And _that_ one was because the only thing you seem to have picked up from Takamachi is her bullheaded stupidity. Jeez, no wonder Yuuno always looked so bent outta shape."

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry! And don't you start!" Fate pointed a finger at Lindy, who was giggling at the situation.

* * *

"Of course the Witch would have to show up now. Every other bit of this outing has turned to shit, why stop here?" Hotaru snapped, shaking her fists at a deranged sky. "Hey, punk, you actually know how to shoot that thing?" This was directed at Ryusei, who was holding on to Sleigh's discarded pistol like a magic talisman.

"Um, maybe?" Ryusei turned the pistol over, feeling much less confident about it than when he had first picked it up. "Why?"

"Cause these things don't like to fight fair, and they always have-" Hotaru's diatribe cut off in a grunt of effort, as she leaped to get a line on something approaching from behind the group, and Saya and Ryusei dove for the dubious protection of the writhing, hissing grass as their youkai companion hurled fluorescent yellow bullets at a hideous stone statue which had appeared behind them. The statue exploded into chunks which screamed in pain as they spattered across the landscape before disintegrating. "Like I was saying, they've always got minions." Hotaru finished upon landing. "(This is your area of expertise, do something!)" the firefly snarled, directing her words into Ranko's ear while the others were still distracted by the strange circumstances.

"Verily, I am," Ranko replied, holding her sword before her in a salute.

"Standing there looking cute isn't what I'd call something useful!"

"I am calling for help."

* * *

"Well, this is starting to suck." Kyōko grumbled over her shoulder. Sayaka was pressed up against Kyōko, back to back as they watched over the battlefield. In ordinary circumstances, being close enough to touch was comforting, even inspiring to the Puella Magi pair, but with the DC and STAR fighting below them, the Wolkenritter circling around them, and Ranko's empathic plea ringing in their heads, there was little comfort to be found.

"Go ahead and run then, if that's what you want to do, ya damn delinquent!" Sayaka snarled, leaning in to her shield to take the hit from a _Schwalbefliegen_, hurling a conjured saber sidearm at Vita, who was obliged to dive to avoid the whickering blade.

"What, and leave your Newbie-ass skills as the only thing carrying the honor of the Puella Magi here? Like hell!" Kyōko snapped back, punctuating her point with a stretching thrust of her spear that clipped a lock from Signum's hair.

Before either of the girls could make another verbal volley, a strangely distorted voice filled the link. _If you lot could put your personal problems on hold for a minute and light up your Witch-hunting lanterns, I could send you some help. Help with your new flying friends, that is. The rest of it you'll have to sort out yourselves!_

"Uh, sure," Sayaka mumbled, too surprised to put anything more into words as she obeyed the voice and activated her Soul Gem, causing it to flare brightly in the darkness.

"Hey, who the hell are you, and how'd you get inside my head?" Kyōko asked, but she also did as instructed.

* * *

"You'll find out in a flash." The words came from Miko, but the voice was Koishi, using her gifts to channel the Coordinator's words into the empathic link. Reimu shook her head in amazement as she watched.

"Okay, that was . . . impressive," Reimu said, choosing the most diplomatic option for her feelings on letting Koishi into her mind intentionally. "But how are you going to get there? If they had the time to 'Card somebody in, they would have done so."

"Watch this, oh ye of little deviousness," Miko replied with a smirk, before flinging one of her Spellcards to Nue, who fed it into a strange box attached to her computer.

"Setting up the coordinates now . . . where do you want to go?" Nue asked, tapping in a long string of numbers on the screen.

"Right on their bloody heads." Miko replied, drawing out her sword. "Go!" Nue hit the 'enter' key, the machine pinged and burned the Spellcard within, and Miko was gone before Reimu even had time to flinch.

"Okay, how does that work? And what's wrong with not being devious?" Reimu asked with a frown.

"Pretty simple, really." Nue shrugged. "I picked up their flares on the satellite feed, and use that to pull the coordinates. Then the transmitter here sets the location as the destination for the 'Card. We can only jump to a place we know, or be pulled to a spot by a friend, but this thing 'knows' any location that has satellite coverage. Patchy did a great job with the original magic, but she was only looking to retrieve people. Miko wanted a way to sneak up behind somebody and knife 'em in the back if needed, which is something that somebody straightforward like yourself wouldn't look at."

"Uh-huh," Reimu replied, glaring daggers at the back of Nue's head. "But wait, didn't you just say you couldn't get any satellites earlier?"

"Yeah, not imaging satellites. But when we were messing with this idea, we discovered that the Soul Gem's witch-hunting lantern shows up in the microwave bands. TV satellites transmit and receive in that range, and those are a dime a dozen."

"Okay, I'll pretend I understand any of that . . . " Reimu muttered. "Shouldn't Miko have taken more backup though? Or should I call Utsuho over and have you send them another care package?"

"Oh, she did. We didn't actually build the transmitter, and we had to promise the creator she'd get dibs on the first combat jump." Nue offered, smirking at the thought.

"That's the most ridiculous form of payment I've ever heard of. But I suppose I don't have to ask who built it then . . ."

* * *

BGM: IOSYS – Touhou Variable Spellcaster – "Nighttime Cruising"

With the sharp pop of displaced air and the sudden blast of searing sparks, Signum's first thought was _did one of them just set off a bomb?_ Then a beam of shockingly bright light sliced through the air towards her, _tracking_ the Knight of the Sword as she attempted to evade, and she had her answer.

"Reinforcements! Vita, we need to wrap this up." Signum commanded, feeding another cartridge into Laevateinn. _Three cartridges. We underestimated the quality of our opponents. _I _failed to do the appropriate amount of planning for this mission._ Frustration drove her arm as Signum lashed out at the new attacker, but her target out-flew the bladed whip and made it look easy.

"Hi! What's your name?" Marisa asked, cheekily, as she braked to a sudden halt before Signum. "Now, that's not very neighborly!" said Marisa with an exaggerated frown as she rolled over on her broom to avoid another snap of Laevateinn. "My name's Marisa, and this. . . this is my Hakkero!" Marisa presented the mana reactor and fired, smashing Signum with a beam of laser light.

"Y-you honorless fiends!" Vita cursed Sayaka and Kyōko as they piled on to her, Sayaka shouldering in with her shield to foul Graf Eisen while Kyōko wrapped her up with the scorpion spear.

Down below, the commander of the DC regulars found that the tide was turning against his forces as well, as he found his strafing run aborted by a sword crossing him up. "Have at you!" Miko shouted gleefully, locking up the Guarlion's assault blade with _Shichi-Sei Ken, _in a clash that carved curls of metal from the DC pilot's titanium blade. Coordination began to fall apart among the DC corps, followed by the Lions themselves as Miko held her target at bay with ferocious slashes while throwing bullets at everything else that flew.

* * *

Within the Witch's Barrier, the would-be rescue party were themselves waiting for rescue, having closed into a tight circle. Despite judicious use of Spellcards, and Ranko's enchanting Ryusei's pilfered gun, turning it into a human-sized simulacrum of a Lion railgun, the situation was getting uglier by the minute.

In the middle of the circle, Saya was miserable. _Damnit! I wish I had any kind of power. If they weren't worried about covering me, the others could be doing something useful. I never asked to be anyone's burden. Is it too much to ask, not to be stuck like this?_

Salvation arrived suddenly, in the form of singing wires that ripped the stone statues asunder. Alice Margatroid touched down lightly before the team. "Shall we adjourn?" Alice asked, her phalanx of doll soldiers swarming around the perimeter, prepared for flight or fight.

"Not just yet, Lady Alice. We must prosecute this Witch first and foremost, and complete the mission which brought us here besides." Ranko stated, bowing in apology.

"Understood. Give us the course." Alice replied. "But first," the magician tasked two dolls with carrying teacups that she filled with a fragrant red tea, one each for Saya and Ryusei. "A simple enchantment potion, do not worry. It will grant you the ability to fly for a short period of time, which will make the journey much easier."

"Uhh, huh. And how do we fly, exactly?" Saya asked, eying the cup dubiously.

"You just, y'know, jump. And don't come down." Hotaru explained, earning a glare from Saya.

"No, she is approximately correct, if lacking tact." Alice replied. "Flying is not really a skill that can be explained to those who aren't born with it. But it is more simple than it might seem, and I assure you, you won't fall from the sky. Unless the enchantment wears off, of course."

"Riiight." Saya growled, but she slugged down the tea. Much to her displeasure, Saya discovered that Hotaru pretty much had the right of it. _It kinda feels like stretching for something, only it doesn't stop._

Taking to the air made the going much easier, at least until the statues learned to chip pieces off one another and hurl them skyward, but even then the projectiles were an annoyance rather than a real danger. Soon enough, Ranko cried out and dived towards her goal, and the rest of the party followed. In the rear, Saya was interrupted by a doll in a red dress that parked in front of her, holding out a pill.

"Mana actuator," Alice supplied when Saya made to shoo the doll away. "It will give you a temporary ability to fight, enough to see you through this battle." When Saya frowned at the pill and its bearer, the dollmaker said, "I could sense your vexation earlier, at not being able to defend yourself. I thought this would help, but I won't force you to use it."

"Uh, it's not that, although how did you learn how to psychoanalyze people on the spot? Anyway, I can't dry-swallow pills. Got anymore tea?"

"Oh, right." Alice produced another teacup and sent it over. "As for the other bit, I'll introduce you to the answer when we're done here. She's helping out your other friends with their battle." Saya considered correcting Alice on the nature of her relationship with Kyōko, thought better of it, and downed the pill. As the magic took hold, Saya had to hold back a shout of excitement at the feeling of power flowing through her, and with that power in hand, she dove into the fight, but the battlefield had suddenly become very crowded indeed.

* * *

"I was not informed they could do _this_ either," Signum muttered, her mood as dark as the blood dribbling down her chin. Three-on-two were not terrible odds for a Knight of Ancient Belka, but when those three were a pair of veteran Puella Magi and the greatest Human magician in Gensokyo, the fight wasn't pretty either. Frustration with the way the battle was going enraged Signum, and she made a deliberate choice to abandon tactics and instead try to remove at least one of the combatants with an unrestrained assault. Part of the problem was the fact that the team opposing the Wolkenritter were almost perfectly designed to counter their abilities. Their chain-wielder had obviously worked on the other two in the past, for Laevateinn's _Schlangeform_ held no terror for them, as it had for so many foes in the past; the shield-bearer meanwhile was doing too good a job bottling up Vita, whose best attacks all required a long windup in _Raketenform_, and the blunette just wasn't letting her have that much time to herself. _And I would go relieve her, but that _bitch_ on the _broom_ keeps strafing me!_ Signum shook her head, bearing her teeth in a snarl. _There is only one way this can end, and I wish it wasn't so. It's been too long since we've had a good, proper challenge. But duty comes first._

Unfortunately for the Wolkenritter, calamity came sooner, in the form of a truly wicked crossup which saw Kyōko wrapping her spear around Sayaka and pulling her free of her current clash with Vita before throwing her across space to engage Signum. Stymied by an angry Puella Magi in her face, Signum was forced to pull up short and cross blades with Sayaka, which left Vita in the open and Marisa on the loose.

"_Nine-Sided Circle ~ Sticky Candy!_" Marisa announced, putting one of the fruits of the curious collaboration project she had joined over the summer into play. Gobs of glowing orange danmaku filled the space before her, sticking and crystallizing upon Vita until she was frozen in place in a prison of sugar. Eyes wide with anger more than fear, the Knight of the Hammer shouted the worst profanities she knew at Marisa, who was too busy to listen. "Nighty-night!" Marisa jeered as she pressed her right hand to the back of the left, providing a sturdy brace for the Hakkero as it wound up to full charge. But when the arcane reactor reached its apex, the ravenous light of the Master Spark was nowhere to be seen. Marisa didn't even call out her signature spell, instead giving only a tepid cough.

". . . oh. That's new," Marisa stated, too shocked to shout as a hand appeared out of her chest, clutching a radiant spark that had been torn from her. Then Shamal, third member of the Wolkenritter, the owner of the hand that had torn Marisa's soul out of her mortal shell, invoked the Book of Darkness that she held in her other hand, and by then it was too late for screaming.

"Cut it close enough, Shamal?" Vita snapped as she watched the transference ritual begin. The Knight of the Hammer began to squirm in her bindings immediately after, as she knew the other two were still out there, and while she expected them to try and go after Shamal for what she was doing, Vita didn't want to bet her life on her opponents following a set pattern. "And drain her faster, these things aren't coming off!"

In fact, Marisa very much wanted to scream, but the pain was too great. Her knowledge of the arcane told Marisa exactly what was happening, and as a magician, she could almost admire the trick; her attacker was draining her mana directly from her soul, and along with it, she was getting the imprints of any spells Marisa had prepared for use that day. But there was a big problem with the arrangement; while a normal mage would be rendered unconscious and quite possibly damaged by having her mana torn from her in this manner, Marisa was still holding the Hakkero, and so the siphon was draining its baleful energies as well- straight back through Marisa's arm. _These guys are so bad, they would do something like this just to win a fight? No way. I cannot let them win. I _will not_ let them win._ Throwing every bit of herself she had left at it, Marisa took control of the Hakkero's power once more, and spurred it to act. "non . . . directional . . . laser!"

Beams slashed through the darkness, searing Vita and Signum, and one arm of the laser passed over Marisa. While a Spellcard wouldn't affect its caster, the same couldn't be said for the hand sticking out of Marisa's torso.

* * *

"Yeouch!" On a rooftop far removed from the battle site, Shamal yelped and canceled her spell, getting back a hand that looked like it had been lightly boiled. "Those ones are certainly clever. I'll give them that. I can't remember the last time I've actually been interrupted during a siphon."

"Clever, and powerful," said the lupine humanoid who accompanied Shamal, agreeing with her assessment. Technically speaking, Zafira was not a Belkan Knight, as he lacked both their training in sorcery and one of their cartridge-fed Devices. But as the Guardian Spirit bound to the Book of Darkness, he was one of the Wolkenritter, and the differences between himself and the three Knights was too slight to matter to anyone who might encounter him in battle. "We got thirty pages out of that."

"Thirty?! Now I'm really glad I got to that blonde one in time. I'd hate to see the condition Vita would've been in if she had been hit with whatever that was she was winding up."

"Indeed," Zafira replied, leafing through the Book of Darkness. "And from what I'm reading, her other spells were pretty damn good too. But right now I would suggest we make our exit with all haste."

"I don't think we need to worry. From the impressions I got, our enemies are too soft-hearted to pursue us, when they have an injured comrade to deal with."

"It's not that, milady," Zafira shook his head. "Rather, I don't want to see if Mistress Hayate will make good on her threat of having a doghouse installed for me to sleep in if I don't get you lot home before dinner gets cold."

". . . there is that," Shamal agreed, wincing slightly.

* * *

"Raising Heart, Divine Buster!" Nanoha swept the blazing beam of her staff across the face of the monster below. The monster- and Nanoha could think of no better name for the thing whose physical form appeared to be nothing but a writhing mass of stone serpents with faces that flickered and blurred in a way that was nauseating to see- recoiled and tried to shy away from that hot light shining down upon it. Several serpents were burned off or blasted to pieces, but there always seemed to be more, and now a few darted out to snap at Nanoha, but these were met in turn by Fate's Photon Lancer, which smashed through the heads and sent their bodies plummeting to the ground. Now the beast thrashed and writhed faster, and Nanoha pulled back slightly, wary of a new kind of attack, but then she realized that the strange contortions were because she and Fate weren't the only ones attacking it.

Lances of utter darkness crashed into the hide of the monster, followed by a projectile of some sort, hurled deep into the mass. The missile bit into the monster's flesh with a _crunch_, that became a _crack!_, then a thunderous roar as the stone crumbled to dust. As the thing disintegrated, Nanoha spied a ball of black iron that had been held within the monster, now laying in the center of the pile of wreckage. Turning to Fate, Nanoha pointed to the object, and she saw on her friend's face that Fate had the same idea; _that thing looks like one of the Jewel Seeds, only corrupted, or something._ Readying Raising Heart in case the monster had any more surprises, Nanoha descended to investigate.

There were surprises in store, for sure, but not of the kind Nanoha had expected. Instead, a thin, wickedly sharp silver sword barred her path to the strange object, and at the other end of the sword was yet another surprise. ". . . Ranko?" Nanoha asked, thrown off-balance by seeing one of her classmates at the site of the battle. _That's weird, I thought she was . . . well, okay, not really normal, but not . . . like us._ "What are you doing here?"

"I sensed the disturbance caused by this Witch, and took actions to expunge its darkness from the land, which I surmise was your intent as well?" Ranko asked, although Nanoha noticed that the other girl still held her sword over the object.

"Y-yes. That thing there, it's dangerous . . ." Nanoha looked down at the black iron ball on the ground.

"It is called a Grief Seed, and you are correct it is dangerous, moreso than you can know."

"Here, I'll dispose of it-" Nanoha started to reach for the Grief Seed, but she was interrupted by Ranko's sword being placed on a decidedly hostile line towards her throat.

"You are not one of my kindred, thus you have not the ability to do so. _I _shall dispose of it, after I have taken my due from it." Ranko stated, her tone grave.

Fate landed next to Nanoha, Bardiche at the ready. "(What do we do? I'd rather not fight them-)"

"Damn right you don't!" Hotaru stepped up beside Ranko, cracking her knuckles to hide the motion of palming one of her Spellcards.

"Hotaru?!" Nanoha blurted out, frazzled by the appearance of yet another member of Uminari Middle School's Third-Year cohort. "What's going on here?"

"If you seek a culprit, look to the Divine Crusaders. Their sins are what darkened the city enough for this disease to take root." said Ranko. Rather than wait for another round of questions, she speared the Grief Seed with her sword and flipped the foul device into her hand. "I trust our business here is concluded?" Ranko asked, although it had the tone of a command.

"Uh- yeah." Nanoha replied after a long moment.

"Then I bid you farewell and good night."

* * *

Meanwhile, Saya had missed the battle and its attendant drama, for she had discovered another problem within the Witch's house of horrors. Two problems, in fact- Merry and Renko, trapped within the Barrier and running for dear life from one of the animated statues. _Time to see how this works, I guess,_ Saya thought, gathering power within her clenched hands. Swooping down over the statue, Saya hurled the gathered magic with a credible kiai shout, and the blast flattened the statue completely- along with everything in a two-meter radius. "Oops!" Saya frowned at the crater she had made, looking around to make sure she hadn't tagged the very girls she was trying to save with the shot.

"Good evening, Browning-san." Renko managed to be cordial and irritated at the same time when Saya landed before her. "Have you gone as mad as the rest of this place, or is there an explanation for all this?"

"Uh, no I haven't and yes there is, but I can't tell you yet, because I haven't been told it myself. But once the big nasty thing gets killed-" Saya was interrupted by the bizarre landscape abruptly fading away, leaving the girls standing in a landscaping planter along the Quad. "Just like, er, that, I guess. Anyway, Alice and Ranko should be free and they can give all of us some answers. Wait, where's Alice?" The last bit was for Ranko, who was walking across the green with only Hotaru for company, and looking mightily displeased.

"She was obliged to exit with great haste, I believe due to complications with the larger battle. I suggest we prepare to do likewise." Ranko said, then she stopped and did a double-take when she saw who else was with Saya. "Ahh, that simplifies matters. Ladies, we shall be needing to leave the city tonight. What is the minimum amount of preparation you require in order to so, and how quickly can you carry out said preparation?"

"Now, wait just a minute!" Saya and Renko flinched and looked at each other, having both started on the same page with the reading of the riot act to their self-appointed leader. "Mind giving us an explanation on _why_ we have to leave in such a damn hurry?" Renko asked.

"Because the winds of La Gias are blowing, and they carry with them the chill of the grave," Merry supplied, her wide blue eyes radiating terror. "This was only the beginning."

"Right, change of plans. How soon can we leave?" Renko asked, rubbing at Merry's arms to try and restore warmth that had been stolen from her by means other than the physical.

"Everybody link hands," Ranko gave the command, and the rest of the rather spooked party did so with little complaint, the only laggard being Ryusei, who was tripped up by the fact he was still holding a gun in one hand. Pocketing the pistol, Ryusei grabbed Saya's hand. Ranko then drew a Spellcard, spoke the command word to draw upon its magic, turned the card over . . . and then the group was somewhere else, a simple if large foyer in what appeared to be an office building.

"Well, that definitely beats waiting for the bus," Ryusei remarked.

"Hey, clear outta here! We've got wounded incoming!" This announcement came from a girl whose hair was as fiery as the temper she was sporting, dressed in a gray skirt-suit cut rather less conservatively than one would call proper for an office setting, but not so outrageous as to make one wonder what else she was selling. In any case, Saya was paying attention to the girl's clothing mainly because she didn't want to meet her eyes. _We just teleported across the city, no more like partway across the country. I don't even know how I can tell that, but I can, and the only thing I can think of is to bitch about being bossed around by this girl. How did abnormal become so normal so quickly?_

Numbly, Saya locked on to the smudge of red hair in front of her and started following it, barely registering as Merry peeled off to go check out something that drew her interest, taking Renko with her; then Ryusei was lost, stuck to a bay window overlooking the Gespenst workshop as if it were flypaper; then Ranko and Hotaru were lost in a joyous reunion with their friends, of the type that would have made Saya nauseous if she had been paying attention; and then, suddenly, the red smudge stopped, and Saya had to pull up short to keep from running in to the owner.

"So, Boss, looks like we've got a live one here," the redhead snarked, stepping aside to reveal . . . a woman who hardly looked older than Merry, dressed in a leotard and arm- and leg-warmers, performing a stretch that came either from ballet training or a desire for self-destruction, as best as Saya could tell. _Of course the "boss" is a weirdo. Everybody else in this cockamamie operation is a barking looney!_

"Well yes, it's weird, but it's in my contract; 'as per the renumerations agreement, the chief executive officer is permitted to obtain one (1) additional personality quirk per one billion yen of year-over-year profit increase', which just goes to show that the pen _is_ mightier than the sword, when placed in the hands of a sufficiently talented lawyer. And I'll have you know not everyone here is a barking looney. Some of my employees meow or chirp."

"Uh . . . okay? Wait, I didn't actually say any of that-"

"Aloud? No, but you thought it, which makes no difference for me. I'm Satori, by the by, and normally I don't outright pluck other people's thoughts from their heads, but I figured it would be best to get things out of the way straight off." Satori turned but did not stop her exercises as she addressed the other occupant in the room. "Rin, can you fetch some black tea and the service? Browning-san is about two minutes away from a complete adrenaline crash, and it would be distastefully ironic to lose one of our rescuees to shock."

"Can do, Boss!" Rin replied and stepped quickly from the room, pulling the door shut on her way out with an appendage that Saya belatedly realized was not her hand.

". . . your secretary has a tail?" Saya asked, too drained to do more than shake her head at the latest measure of madness.

"Two, actually; _bakemono_ earn an extra tail for every hundred years of continued sentience, and they tend to be very fussy about the distinction. What, you thought I was joking about the chirping and meowing part earlier?"

"Yeah, actually, and could you, er, not do that?" Saya eyed Satori dubiously as she worked through yet another set of seemingly impossible stretches, which drew a wince from Saya as she tried to imagine contorting her own limbs in a similar fashion.

"I'm afraid I cannot. Please understand that when I say my Third Eye allows me to read the thoughts of others, I mean _all _others within a certain radius, and I can't turn it off. And right now, there's a girl downstairs in the medical ward who is in more pain than a Human body ought to be able to experience. The Divine Crusaders and their new allies did something to her out there, I don't know what, but it burnt her from the inside out. They're trying to decide whether to cut off her arm to keep the damage from accumulating, and she's trying to decide whether or not it would be better just to die than be maimed in that way. And past that are the 'ordinary' hurts of the constables we sent out to try and stop the bastards, who got shot up in the process, and the background hum of a city gripped by fear." As she spoke, Satori caught her foot in both hands, behind her back, and pulled until her heel touched the back of her head. "So no, I can't stop. This pure agony within me is the only thing keeping everything else out."

"That's nice," Saya spat. "What do you want me to say, huh? 'Sorry you got all tore up doing a rescue I didn't ask for'? I never asked to be a part of any of this, alright!" A hasty kick caught Satori's ankle, breaking her only connection with the floor, at least until gravity kicked in and brought the rest of her down to the ground. Seeing her fall, witnessing the moment of vulnerability, Saya felt all the stress of the day rebound upon her. The magic Alice gave her was gone, but for a moment Saya felt like she could make her own thunder from the anger inside her. The moment stretched to unbearable length, neither party breaking eye contact while the hateful emotions hung in the air.

"I'm sorry." It was Satori who spoke first, once the immediate danger passed. "It was cruel of me to lay the situation upon you in such a fashion when you've suffered your own trials. And no, this wasn't your fault, we would have responded to the DC raid in either case, and so the outcome would've been the same, most likely."

"Sorry for dumping you on the floor like that. I guess I just wanted to hurt _something_ after all this today, and I couldn't get at the people who deserved it, so I went for the first thing I could get my hands on." Saya held out a hand to Satori, who accepted the help to stand.

"For what it's worth kid, that was a pretty decent try." The voice was Rin, standing behind Saya with a tea tray in one hand, and the other stretched out, sharp black claws extended from each fingertip. "I woulda had to drop the tea to get you in time."

"Uh, thanks, I guess. Yeah. I'll take that tea now," Saya responded, but as she flopped down onto the office couch, she was asleep before her body came to a halt.

"Wow, that went fast," Rin muttered, watching as Saya crumpled onto the cushions.

"Perils of the unaugmented Human form." Satori replied with a frown.

"Speaking of, how're we gonna deal with, y'know . . ." Rin glanced to the floor, and the medical facilities below, fearful of jinxing the patient by speaking the situation out loud.

"She will pull through, somehow, I expect. That's the flip side of being Human- they get none of our advantages, and nowhere near as much time to get things right, so it forces them to work harder for what they want. Cold as it might sound, this could work to our benefit in the end. It occurs to me that our conflict with the DC is much like a danmaku duel; it's not who plays the first card who wins, but who plays the last. With that in mind, I think it's time to take up Tesla-Leicht on their offer to set us up with a new manufacturing line. We'll let the raven of chaos take wing, and see how the DC handles a fight on their own turf."

* * *

"So, how did it go?" Valcyone asked the nearly-empty shadows.

"Dirty pool," Alchemie growled, waving the sheet of bubble wrap that had been laying on the floor behind the command seat in front of her contractee.

"Hey, you were the one who said we would succeed only if we continued to adapt and counter the enemy's next move before they make it."

"Yes, well, use that on the _enemy,_ not me. In any case, do you think Minions R' Us has a sixty-day like-it-or-return-it policy? I almost had to go in and rescue the Wolkencritters, instead of them doing the rescuing like they were supposed to."

"I thought the after-action report said they destroyed one of the enemy mages."

"Well, yeah, but it took them a while to pull that trick, and I wouldn't bet lunch on Unit 952's crew standing still long enough for them to do it twice."

"That may be good enough. An enemy who is busy dodging your attacks has no time to throw any of her own. And anyway, I was talking about your project, not the battle itself."

"Oh. Right." Alchemie frowned. "We're going to have to step lightly from now on. Even with STAR there blunting the raiding party, a Witch still formed near the AO."

"Damnit," Valcyone growled at the bad news.

"_And_ one of theirs managed to scoop the Seed."

"Double damnit!"

"My thoughts exactly. I only hope they can keep their heads. We really don't need this turning into a three-front war with a full-blown Witch infestation."

"We need to do _something_, though, we're running low on Grief Seeds, and they have two teleporters to our one."

"And we're almost out of ice cream too," Alchemie added. "But I would like to point out that I told you taking over the world was going to be a pain in the butt before you made your Wish."

"You also told me that Incubators were duplicitous, amoral fiends, and never to be trusted." Valcyone pointed out.

"Well, I never said I was always right."

* * *

There was one last stage of the mission for the Wolkenritter, and this part they approached with the utmost stealth. After straining to hear if any alarm had been raised by their return, Signum gently eased open the tap on the garden hose, having first dragged a length of the hose around the side of the house. Slipping through the shadows like a wraith, the Knight of the Sword picked up the hose and went to run its thin stream of water upon her arm, to begin the process of washing off the dried blood there. Still watching the surroundings more than the water, Signum didn't realize the stream had disappeared until she touched the end of the hose to her wrist. "The hell?" Signum wondered, thrown off by the incongruity. _What, are even the household tools going to revolt upon me now, just to round out the evening's frustrations?_ Shaking the hose didn't dislodge anything, so Signum took the logical, if unfortunate, next step; she looked down the end of the hose.

Hayate chose that moment to roll her wheelchair off the hose, and a startled squawk and a thud told her that her trick had worked quite well. Startled laughter told Hayate that she wouldn't have to look any farther to find the rest of her missing friends. "If you really thought that I wasn't waiting for you to get back, and couldn't hear the faucet from inside the house, you deserved that." Hayate declared, sticking out her tongue at the drenched and dismayed Knights. "Now would you please get inside and do your cleaning up where it's warm?"

"Wait, you're not going to do anything evil to us for being out so late?" Zafira wondered, which earned a dirty look from Signum.

"Only if you're not inside in one minute!" Hayate stated, which encouraged a swift retreat to the house. Ever the polite one despite her role in the field, Shamal grabbed the wheelchair's handles and helped Hayate inside. The contrast between the Wolkenritter as she saw them and the impressions of the battle as related to her by the Book of Darkness itself made Hayate shiver. _I wish you didn't have to do this. I wish you could just be the good people I see before me, not the weapons you were conjured to be._

* * *

When the phone began to ring, Jail Scaglietti seriously considered hauling out the DC-issue handgun he had pilfered on his last visit to the _Orcus_ and blasting the warbling menace straight off his desk. However, the fast pulse of the ringer indicated that the call was a direct connection, which was something he knew shouldn't be possible with the way the Skyreach Project configured its office exchanges. That was unusual, and unusual was rarely good when it came to the type of work Jail was doing. Gritting his teeth at the incoming complication, Jail snatched the phone off the cradle.

"You've reached Dr. Scaglietti's office. Office hours are between 'not right now' and 'not until later'-"

"_Shut the hell up and listen, Scaglietti, before I send someone over there with an S-Rank weapon to renegotiate our deal!_"

"Ah, good evening to you, Admiral. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"_You never told me there were Incubators operating on this planet of yours!_"

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that was a problem?" Jail replied, genuine confusion in his voice. _What are you afraid of, Admiral? Surely not the chance our red-eyed friends will pump out a few more zombie mages, that would only help the Wolkenritter fill their little magic diary faster.  
_

"_Well it is. Find them and dispose of them, or I will do the same for you-"_ The conversation abruptly ended when a gunshot shook the office.

"Oh dear, so sorry Admiral, there seems to have been an equipment malfunction," Jail said, sarcastically sweet, into the now useless handset. "Seems I'll have to get Building Services to replace that, and this time with one that can't be reached unless I want it to be." Jail smiled in a very unpleasant way at the information sitting on the screen before him. "So Incubators are a problem for you, Admiral? I'd say you just handed me a tool I can use . . . if I wasn't already planning to use it."


	3. Anima Mala

**Episode 3 : Anima Mala**

As the first pale scraps of dawn illuminated the room, Saya Browning found herself tugged in the direction of wakefulness, but she did not yet breach its surface. In this not-yet-conscious state, Saya started through her repertoire of defensive maneuvers, designed to stave off the dreadful state of being awake for just a few more minutes. First came the half-roll, putting her back to the window, which sufficed until the sun climbed halfway onto the horizon, flooding the room with flame-orange light, and in turn Saya pulled the covers over her head to provide a more substantial barrier against the brightness.

Several minutes later, the heat from being piled under layers of bedclothes became too much, causing Saya to roll the opposite way. In her sleep-fogged state, she performed a complete roll to disentangle herself, which was half a roll too much for the simple twin bed installed in her little bungalow. The realization that she was now going to be falling hit her like a bullet to the brain, blasting away sleep.

At this point, Saya sat up and discovered that she had been sleeping in a bed considerably larger than the one she had expected to be in. And in her clothes as well, which was another surprise. "Okay, where am I?"

"Mitikahara." came a reply from around the corner, but at this point Saya was expecting to be surprised, so she acknowledged the voice with a grunt, which was really all the tiny morsel of information was worth. "In ascending specificity; you are located in the Tirei Hyperdynamics Corporation Building, 8th floor, guest quarters, south-west suite." That explanation told Saya both where she was, and who she was talking to as well.

"Okay, well in no particular order at all, I need food, a shower, clothes, and a weapon."

"I feel compelled to suggest that you should shower before changing clothes, for best results." Ranko came around the corner, looking to Saya's eye entirely too composed for half an hour past dawn and dressed in what she recognized as 'normal' clothes, although the distinction was largely confined to the lack of the blade and buckler that Ranko had been wielding during the previous night's battle.

* * *

Despite the rude awakening and subsequent Ranko-ing, Saya found opinion of her hosts rising as she stepped into the shower. While it was outfitted with all the "house of the future" gizmos and gadgets, wall-mounted curtain sprays, showerhead-mounted soap dispenser, multi-spectral warming and tanning lights, and suchlike, the shower was outfitted entirely in black granite tile, crisp glass and chrome trim, which was a considerable improvement over the "low-budget sci-fi set piece" look of the equipment on the Uminari campus. A good, thorough 20-minute shower and a stack of warm, fluffy towels put Saya in a mood that could almost be described as "gracious", which even lasted through the shock of exiting the bathroom to find someone waiting for her.

"Uh, hi. Sorry about this, I wasn't planning on being right here when you got out of your shower. Clothes are on the bed, they're all scrounged from around the house I'm afraid, but that's why shopping is next on the list." The girl was more petite, roughly Saya's height as opposed to the somewhat tall Ranko, and she had eyes the color of topaz and orange hair- not a light shade of "red" or a shade of blonde like Saya, but actually orange in color, shading to pink at the tips.

"Food. Food is next on the list."

"Wriggle was right, you are a spitfire!" the girl giggled.

"And I'm also wearing nothing but a towel, and unlike Ranko, I was raised with a sense of modesty. Get, get, shoo!" With her privacy secured, Saya set about dressing in her scrounged outfit- basic jeans and a black t-shirt emblazoned with the legend "Choujuu Gigaku 2nd Live – We Didn't Burn Down The Bar This Time!" _Also: what kind of name is "Wriggle"?_

"Right, that'll last through breakfast at least." Saya avoided eye contact with the mirror, not wanting to know what the previous day and her hard sleep had done to her hair and face just yet, then she rounded the corner to interrogate her newest acquaintance. "Now, I don't really remember anything after the explosions stopped last night, but I don't think I've met you."

"I'm Charlotte. Nice to meet you," the peach-haired girl said, again with too much cheer for Saya to appreciate at the early hour.

"Charlotte . . ?" Saya asked, making a "gimme more" gesture with one hand.

"Just Charlotte. Now, what's your favorite gemstone?"

"Er-" Saya frowned, surprised that the other girl would simply blow off her question like that, and more surprised that she was going along with it. "Diamond, I guess? Why?" The answer came when Charlotte closed her eyes for a long moment, then withdrew a shining silvery chain bracelet set with a small, lustrous diamond on the central link, which she then handed to Saya.

"What's this?" Saya asked, holding up the bracelet as though it were a dead fish.

"Platinum. I thought it would suit you better than gold."

"No, what _is_ this? Why are you giving it to me." Saya replied, winding a finger into her hair as she fumed.

"Secure communicator and locator device. You probably don't want to be stuck with a bodyguard 24/7."

"You got that damn right!" Saya snapped, fastening the bracelet around her wrist. "Also, who's this Wriggle you mentioned earlier. You already had Hotaru and Ranko stalking me, isn't two weirdos enough?"

"Oh! Right, I forgot you haven't been clued in on the whole organization yet. Hotaru _is_ Wriggle; she was just using the name for cover."

"Okay, you're going to have to start making some of this make sense, or I'm going to go downstairs, jack one of your AFs, and start punching people."

"Well, do you want explanations, or breakfast?"

"Both!"

* * *

The Tirei Tower "company cafeteria" turned out to be a marvelous affair, with a lounge outfitted with service befitting royalty, and a kitchen that turned out food worthy of the gods. This was probably for the best, as it did in fact play host to gods on occasion, although the only divinity on the campus on this particular morning was the un-ascended Sanae Kochiya.

The cafeteria also housed Kyoko Sakura, a point which quickly became a problem. "Uh-oh, looks like Peachie's got another one for her harem!" Kyoko called out, which drew a handful of cackles from those who were familiar with the arrangements of the Puella Magi, and earned Kyoko a hard punch in the shoulder from Sayaka.

"I do _not_ have a harem!" Charlotte called back, fuming.

"Query: Were you or were you not sleeping with two other girls last night?" Kyoko asked in reply, which made Charlotte light up in a furious blush.

"It wasn't like that!" Charlotte wailed. In fact, the peach-haired girl _had_ spent the evening in a bed with both Wriggle and Cirno also present, and the three of them were trying to sort out their mutual romantic entanglements with each other. However, the occasion had been entirely chaste, as the girls were simply celebrating the end of Wriggle's enforced absence while undercover. Even when the excitement wore off and the girls crawled under the covers, they hadn't attempted anything more intimate; in Cirno's case, she had been physically separated from the others by a Mylar insulating blanket, to keep the first night of their reunion from being tainted by a case of hypothermia.

"Then clearly you need to try harder next time!" Kyoko shot back.

"The fuck was all that?" Saya hissed once they were out of Kyoko's range. "Also, you all seem pretty cheerful for almost losing somebody last night, unless the Chief Executive Bitch was lying to me."

"Yes, well, for one Marisa lived through the ordeal, and for two we Puella Magi tend towards gallows humor. It comes with the territory, what with our powers being a death sentence and all." Charlotte remarked as she began to stack food on her plate. "From what I heard, you were there when a Witch appeared down in Uminari, yeah?" Once Saya nodded, Charlotte continued with, "Witches can form on their own, if there is enough despair in the air, but also when a Puella Magi exhausts her powers, she falls and becomes a Witch. So you wanted to know what was up with the name? Well, originally I was Ami Hikaru, then I met an Incubator and became a Puella Magi, then I blew up, then I became Charlotte the Witch, then I got blown up again, then I got brought back, then it turned out that Ami already had a death certificate on file, so I stayed Charlotte."

"So wait, is Hotaru, Wriggle, whatever her name is, she's related to you or something?"

"Not as such. Kyoko was more or less right, the miserable bitch," Charlotte threw a glare at the smirking redhead as she crossed over to the table where Wriggle and Cirno were waiting. "Wriggle's choice of name was her way of trying to even the score."

"Yeah, yeah, I was trying to even the score, sue me." Wriggle grumbled. "The part she's leaving out is that until you do die, the Puella Magi powers let you kick ten types of ass at once."

"I'm guessing there's a reason you haven't gone and got the power for yourself?" Saya asked, which got a fork pointed at her head with intent.

"Yeah, there's a reason," Wriggle snarled, emphasizing each word with a jab of the fork. "Her name's Nova Fucking Floresca."

"Can you guys _please_ stop dropping random names without introducing me to these people first? Or is there some kinda almanac I can pick up?"

"Nova's our Incubator. She swore not to make any more Contracts after seeing the damage they were doing, and she's one of only two left on Earth who have the ability to make Contracts." Charlotte popped half a pancake into her mouth before continuing. "And before you ask, we can't go to the other one; that's Alchemie, and she runs the Divine Crusaders."

"Wait, I thought the lady with the big sword and the glowy hair ran the DC?"

"Lesson Number One; the Incubator is always the one pulling the strings." Charlotte declared, which got nods of agreement from Wriggle and Cirno.

"So what does that say for this place then?" Saya replied with a skeptical air.

"Oh, well Nova doesn't really count anymore, she sorta quit the Project cold turkey."

"And how'd that work out for her?" Saya asked. "Cataclysmic, or just catastrophic?"

"Apocalyptic, in the truest sense of the word." This came from Ranko, who approached the table with a small tray of food and a blonde girl- woman, Saya realized; she looked to be in her late teens, and like Ranko she was dressed severely in black, and wearing jewelry with malicious intent. "(There's two of them?)" Saya mouthed to the table when she saw the newcomer, whimpering slightly.

"That's Rumia. She used to be like us, then she got the chassis upgrade, and we've been slowly chipping her ego back down to size ever since. She's useful, though," Charlotte smirked. "You'd be surprised how many places you can get into with a token adult in tow."

"I am so very glad I can be of service, Oh Fearless Leader." Rumia said, giving Charlotte the biggest eye-roll she could manage without actually causing her eyeballs to pop out of her head.

"So what aren't you telling me?" Saya asked. "I mean, everybody has powers, but you're not all part of this Puella Magi thing, so where's the rest of it coming from?"

"That's another long story-" Charlotte replied, then suddenly she, Cirno, and Ranko flinched in unison. "And one I won't be able to tell you right now. Duty calls. Loudly." the peach-haired girl grumbled, still wincing slightly, and the three stood up and left the table, leaving Rumia frowning and Wriggle fuming.

"I fucking hate that shit," Wriggle growled. "They've got their special little club, and the rest of us don't get to play. Oh, sure, little bits trickle down to us, like these things," Here Wriggle raised her arm, to show a bracelet crafted of gold links similar to the one Saya had been given, with an iridescent green gem on its face. "But they don't realize that it only rubs our faces in it."

"Keep in mind they're still only Human . . . which is why I grabbed this." Rumia placed a small package in front of Saya. "Ranko is many things, single-minded being one of them. I fully expected she would forget what she was doing when I ran into her, so I relieved her of her duties before she could fail to do them."

"Uh-huh," Saya replied, holding up the item between thumb and forefinger. "I asked for a _weapon._ This is a _glove_."

"Is that so?" Rumia snatched the glove from Saya's hand, put it on, and then stole the apple off her tray. "Watch and learn." Lofting the apple over Saya's head, Rumia quickly gestured at it with her gloved hand curled into a claw, which caused a considerable quantity of danmaku to fly forth in a tight pattern. The apple was utterly obliterated, so that not even a bit of pulp landed on Saya's head.

"Okay, fine, I see your point." Saya glared across the table. "I'll take the stupid thing."

* * *

Reimu took a hard breath before reaching out to knock on the door. _Calm down, it's okay, she's not dead . . ._ "Ahhh!" Reimu was shocked when she looked up to see that she was about to knock on a fresh corpse.

"Jeez, calm down, ze! It's just me," Marisa mumbled, the words coming out mushy on account of the purple bruises.

"Yes, but, good heavens! I didn't realize you got beat up this badly!"

"Oh this?" Marisa asked, waving her right hand around her head. "That wasn't the bad guys." With a bitter chuckle, Marisa picked up her left arm, letting Reimu see the thick swathe of bandages around it. "You know how the stairs up to my attic go?" Reimu nodded, looking up at the small porthole window on top of Marisa's cottage with distaste. "Well I was trying to put together a potion to numb the pain, and of course Alice can't ever find anything in my stores . . ." Here Reimu rolled her eyes, for trying to call Marisa's stockpile of ingredients "organized" was an affront to language. "Yeah, yeah. Isn't rolling your eyes at an injured woman against your religion, and if it isn't, what kind of bribes does Utsuho like?

"Back to the point though, I got the stuff from upstairs, but apparently on the way down I usually put my left hand on the wall to brace myself. Well, by the time I realized my hand wasn't being obedient, I was already breaking my fall with my face."

"So what you're saying is, the biggest danger to the health of Marisa Kirisame . . . is Marisa Kirisame. _Alice!_" Reimu shouted over Marisa's shoulder, which brought the puppeteer running. "Why haven't you tied this menace down?"

"I tried. She chewed through the ropes the first time, and now Shanghai won't go near enough to try again." Alice deadpanned.

"So do it yourself then?" Reimu asked, hands on hips.

"How about you do it?" Alice held up her hands and waggled her fingers. "I still have all my digits, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Mutineers," Marisa growled, but she was still smiling.

"Yes, well, tea is on the table." Alice replied, which was enough to draw Marisa away for the moment.

"So how is she really doing?" Reimu quietly asked.

"She is, I believe the phrase is 'high as a kite'. I've been adding fermented fairycap to the tea, I want to ease her in to the reality of it slowly. She's going to lose the arm. The problem is she had opened the Hakkero almost the whole way when that bitch hit her with the drain attack. It pulled the full power back through her, which would be bad enough, but the casing of the reactor cracked. It's fused into her hand and leaking mana. Eirin put a stasis enchantment on the bandages, which is keeping her from being poisoned, but it's only a matter of time."

"If there's anything you need, just let me know." Reimu said, patting Alice on the shoulder.

"There is, actually; I need a shot at the bitch who did this, and a pike to put her head upon afterward."

* * *

"Right then, let's get down to business." Nova clapped her printed notes against the podium before her, feeling foolish as she stood in front of her friends. All of the Puella Magi in Mitikahara were assembled in the conference room adjoining Satori's office, a place that had earned the nickname "The Pit of Despair" for all the bad news that had been delivered there since Tirei Tower was set up. In contrast to the name, however, the gathering had a much more jovial, party-like atmosphere. This was in no small part Koishi's doing; she was reading the others with her Third Eye fully opened, and pushing positive vibes onto the empathic link where needed, managing the mood in the room much like a DJ lining up tracks.

There were a few attendees who weren't part of the network, but they were getting taken in by the positive atmosphere as well. These included Captain Daichi Miki, operating in his official capacity as commanding officer of STAR along with his nemesis-turned-ally Hirou Yamaguchi, who was operating in _his _official capacity as chief of the local Yakuza, and provider of such illicit goods and services as were necessary. Satori was present as well, but for her the positive mood was almost as uncomfortable as the previous night's sorrow, and she found herself unconsciously doing leg stretches as she stood in the back of the room, which didn't work nearly as well in a proper business suit.

"Point of order: Use an inside voice when talking inside somebody's head!" Sayaka called out, which set off a round of jeers and popcorn-throwing. In the two years of living with their mutual empathic connection, the Puella Magi had learned several ways they could utilize the link, but one major constraint remained; the "volume" of the voice decreased based on the distance between sender and receiver, so in order to catch the attention of Hitomi and Akiko, who were clear across town at the school, Nova had ended up blasting everybody in the building with the equivalent of a megaphone held directly to their ears.

"Sorry about that. Trust me, right now I'd understand if you decided to wrap _these_-" Here, Nova tugged on her long white sidelocks, which were meant to echo her original form as an Incubator. "Around my head and strangle me with them." _I completely forgot that I could do this._ Nova finished her explanation using the latent telepathy which Incubators possessed to speak with their Contractees.

"That's fine for calling out to people, but try not to use it unless you have to, alright?" Sayaka said, making a "wait a minute" gesture in order to finish her explanation. "When you use the link, you sound like you, but when you use the telepathy, you sound like, well, Kyubey."

"So noted," Nova replied, blanching at the thought. There was a small eternity's worth of bad karma sitting in Nova's account from her actions before becoming Human, and the last thing she wanted to do was add to it by reminding her friends of the bad old days. _Of course, the situation is such that I'm going to have to go back to some of that time_, Nova realized, but she kept that thought to herself.

"Anyway, back to business. You all know me, and know that I've gotten better about handling what's thrown our way since we started on this journey, I trust?" Nova scanned the faces of her friends, making sure to meet each pair of eyes with her golden ones. The curious phenomenon of golden eyes so far had manifested only for her and Madoka, and then only after they had each faced the darkness in their hearts and overcome it. _There's still so much we don't know about this magic, even for we who created the ritual and started this Project. If "created" is even the right word. Still, it doesn't seem fair; embrace the Witch as Kyoko and Sayaka have done, and you gain new powers. Reject the Witch like me and Madoka, and you get a cosmetic upgrade._

"So please understand that I'm trying not to be any more dramatic than is absolutely necessary when I say that our new opponents in this Incident are interesting, and when I say 'interesting', I really mean 'oh god oh god, we're all gonna die'." Nova delivered the line deadpan, which drew a few chuckles and a few more rolled eyes. A series of images flashed up on the screen, each one a rough dossier of sorts. Kyoko and Sayaka both recognized Vita and Signum from the battle, and they knew well the weapons being shown alongside them, and while they hadn't laid eyes on the third Knight, a simple process of elimination linked Shamal's image to the hand that had torn Marisa apart from the inside.

"These are the Wolkenritter, a group of combat mages trained in the way of Ancient Belka. Belkan mages are called 'Knights', for what should be fairly obvious reasons, and these three are top of the line specimens of the form. I say 'specimens' because they aren't really living beings; they're conjurations, drawn from an artifact of tremendous power, known as the Book of Darkness. The Book links itself to a prospective mage, and if that person decides to open the Book, it grants the mage the service of the Wolkenritter, and sets in motion a powerful ritual. Once the book has fed upon a sufficient quantity of magical energy, it becomes fully active. At this point the Book can make just about anything the mage might wish for come true."

"Why do I not like where this is going?" Homura asked, glaring at the screen that displayed an image of the Book of Darkness itself.

"Because if it was going somewhere good, I wouldn't have called everybody here to explain all this stuff." Nova replied. The next slide popped up on the screen, and this image drew gasps of unpleasant surprise from those in the room who hadn't quite pieced together what Homura had; the screen showed the Wolkenritter flanking a man who held forth the opened Book of Darkness in a prayerful manner. The shock was on account of the identity of the man with the Book- those in the room knew him as Proteus, Unit 001, leader of the Incubators.

"Yes, that picture means what you're thinking. We used the power of the Book of Darkness to kickstart the Incubation Project, eons ago. The combat techniques and weaponry gifted to a Puella Magi upon her making the Contract are based on Belkan techniques. The _Soul Grasp_ spell they use to fill the Book- any of them can do it, if they're holding the Book- is the same spell we use to extract and create the Soul Gem. In short they can do everything we can, only without being tied down by the corruption that fills us."

"Is there any good news to all of this, or should I just go ahead and start with the misery-binging right now?" Kyoko asked, extracting a packet of Pocky from her jacket.

"I don't know if it's actually _good_ good news, but then you've never needed an excuse to eat everything in sight before, so I suppose that makes us even? Either way, mages aren't exactly a dime a dozen around here, so they can't have filled many pages of the Book yet. That means if we can find whoever their master is, we can put them out of busy-ness pretty quickly."

"You're wrong." The rebuttal came from Satori, who looked grim. "There are a bunch of beings with magical energy ripe for the harvest in the vicinity. All they need to do is figure out how to get across the Border into Gensokyo, then they'll have a feast of souls."

"Ooh, yeah. I forgot about that. So, um, mind passing the Pocky up here?"

* * *

"Yo, Merry! Renko! You guys coming along, or not?" At first, Renko Usami was more impressed than annoyed at being awoken by a shout outside her door- the guest rooms were well insulated, so the shouter had to have a pretty impressive set of lungs. Of course, the voice sounded like Hotaru, so that wasn't overly surprising.

Unlike Saya, Renko had still been awake when she was shown to her accommodations, which meant she had the benefit of being dressed in a comfortable set of pajamas, rather than her street clothes, and she also understood how the communications system next to the bed worked. Picking up the handset, Renko punched a button which routed her voice to an intercom on the door. "What am I supposed to be coming for?"

"We're going shopping, to get clothes and house stuff."

"Uh, I . . . can't, not right now. Go on without me." Renko replied, hesitantly.

"If it's money, don't worry 'bout it, Tirei's picking up the tab." Hotaru replied.

"That's not it. It's complicated. Seriously, go. We'll catch up later."

"Fair 'nuff." Hotaru replied, and Renko caught the faint sound of footsteps over the intercom. That problem taken care of, Renko sank back down on to her pillow with a pained exhalation of breath- just that short conversation had left her with a serious kink in her shoulder from the awkward way she had been forced to sit. And the reason for _that_ was still wrapped around her at the waist, and also still asleep.

Renko had realized there was something special about Maribel Hearn the day they first met. Not in the romantic sense (although Renko didn't mind sharing sleeping accommodations with Merry in the slightest), but in the way of the supernatural. While Merry's gift had lead the pair on several adventures, sometimes scary, always exciting, it also made her highly sensitive to things unnatural. Being drawn into the Witch's Barrier the previous night had rattled Merry; being unable to break free of the magical entrapment had left her utterly shaken. It had taken Renko almost until dawn to soothe Merry enough for her to sleep, and when she had been awoken by Hotaru's summons, Renko discovered that Merry had taken to her as a hug pillow. Even if she had wanted to spend the day in the company of the middle-school refugees, Renko didn't think anything short of a crowbar was going to dislodge Merry at this point. _At least I don't need to use the . . . uh-oh!_ Renko gritted her teeth as her waking body informed her of business she needed to attend to.

"Alright, c'mon Merry, we need to work something out here . . ." With no actual crowbar at hand, Renko studied her environs for something she could actually use, finally settling on one of the large, squishy pillows. By tucking this next to her body and applying some strategic tickles to her partner, Renko was able to coax Merry to take the pillow into her clutches instead, and then Renko made good her escape.

* * *

"Now, why do the wrench never be where I left it?" Nitori frowned at the Guarlion hanging before her on the test stand, frustrated by the incongruity. Tearing down the captured machine to learn its secrets was priority number one, and if that wasn't motivation enough, Nitori had plenty of reason to want to lose herself in her work. Marisa was one of the kappa's few friends, and she burned with the need to do something, anything to strike back at the DC for what had happened. At the same time, Nitori knew she didn't have the strength to go toe-to-toe with the DC elite or the Wolkenritter, and so she was in the workshop instead, trying to do something that would help those who _could_ do the fighting. Having to admit that, however, had the kappa engineer angry enough to chew steel and spit rivets.

A tap against the back of her hand caused Nitori to reflexively snatch at whatever it was that touched her, and she found her hand closing around a length of cool steel. Surprised, Nitori looked down and realized she had just been handed the wrench she had been looking for. "Where did this-?"

"It was laying on the other side of the suit. Do you want the rest of the toolkit?" Ryusei asked, squatting on his heels.

"That would be excellent, thank you." Nitori replied, although she didn't wait to see if Ryusei was following through before she dived back into her work, detaching the wiring harness that supplied the leg-mounted EM Floater Field device. "You do be one of the kids rescued yesterday, yes? I didn't expect you to be interested in mechanic's work."

"Yeah, well, I've been interested in how these guys work ever since they showed up. I wanted to pilot one, when I got old enough."

"Wanted to? What do you be wanting to do now?" Nitori asked after a long minute of sizing her "patient" up. "Also, hand me that mallet, please? The two-kilo deadblow, the one with the bright red handle, and careful, it do be heavier than it looks."

"Uh, got it. Oof!" Ryusei grunted as he passed the mallet to Nitori. "And after what happened last night, I don't think I could work for the DC, no matter how bad I want-" Ryusei broke off in favor of cringing back and clapping his hands over his ears as Nitori took the mallet in a two handed grip and slammed it down on the back of the Guarlion's knee, which caused the entire lower leg to disengage and crash to the floor. "-wanted to pilot an AF."

"Well, there do be other places to get an AF besides the Crusaders," Nitori replied, pointing down the workshop at where four fresh Gespenst suits stood.

"There do be at that, I suppose." Ryusei replied, chuckling when he realized that he had copied Nitori's curious dialect. "Uh, sorry. Wasn't trying to be rude."

"Not a problem. Keep fetching tools for me and we do be more than even."

"Absolutely!" Ryusei exclaimed, giddy at the chance to dig deeper into one of the fascinating machines, which was the literal case by the time Saya and Wriggle found him- or rather his legs sticking out of the partially disassembled upper torso. Ryusei had climbed in to get at the finger switches for actuating the Guarlion's systems, toggling them one at a time so Nitori could trace which power leads they connected to, and thence disconnect the improved, burst-firing railgun from the right arm without detonating the capacitors, which would pretty much ruin both their days, and a good chunk of the workshop besides.

"Hey, Ryusei! Hop down, we're gonna go shopping, replace our stuff we had to leave behind in Uminari." Saya called out, after knocking on the front glacis of the Guarlion to get the boy's attention.

"If it's all the same, I'd rather stay here. I'm helping Miss Nitori with the teardown . . ." Ryusei trailed off, his ears going red, for he knew that Saya was very well aware of his fascination with the machine.

"Actually, unless you have more clothes, I do think it be in your best interest to go with them." Nitori stated, waving a hand to include Ryusei's front, which was spattered and stained with myomer fluid, coolant, and penetrating oil from collar to pant-cuffs.

"Huh. Yeah, I think that might be a good idea."

* * *

After collecting Rumia for the "token adult" factor, the foursome descended upon Mitikahara's expansive mall, and the first stop was one of the school-approved outfitters, wherein Ryusei was fitted for the standard-issue uniform, said uniform was obtained along with sundries, and then he was bundled off to the health club on the first floor, in order to use its locker room to wash up.

While waiting for Ryusei to return to the land of the clean, Saya attempted to strike up a conversation, regarding the topic foremost on her mind. "So Hota- er, Wriggle- where do we go now, with school and all?"

"Uh, if you want, you can keep calling me Hotaru. It's kinda grown on me."

"And it helps you out in the Girlfriend War, I bet." Saya snickered.

"Hey! I am not going to take that from you!" Hotaru shot back. "The fuck do you even know about a relationship in the first place?"

"I know plenty, thank you, like the fact that changing your name to lay claim to somebody is just creepy." Saya twisted a finger into her hair to keep from putting her fists up.

"Yeah, right! Romance manga doesn't count, and with that attitude of yours, I know you've never gotten any closer to a live date than that!"

"Ahem," Rumia tried to get the attention of the combatants before they caused too much of a spectacle, and when that didn't work, she gave a little sigh and stepped up next to the girls. "Well, since Charlotte isn't here to use her magic charms on you two, I guess we're going with Plan B."

"Wait, what's Plan B?" Hotaru asked, having only tuned in to Rumia's speech at the end, after the mention of Charlotte had percolated from her ears to her brain.

"Just this," came Rumia's cheerful reply, followed by her placing a hand on each girl's head and clunking the two of them together painfully.

"Ow! Was that really necessary?" Saya asked, rubbing her forehead.

"Was getting into an instant catfight really necessary?"

* * *

On her way out of the classroom, Nanoha took one last forlorn look at the seat in the back corner that had remained empty for the entire day. _I'm so sorry, Saya. There must have been something different we could have done, something _more_ we could have done for you, so you wouldn't have felt like you had to leave with those . . . others._ Nanoha shivered; there had been a total of eight disappearances from the school from the dreadful events of the previous evening. Between her recollection of the battle, and Fate's and Arf's, they could account for six of those missing. _Subtract Ranko and Hotaru, who were the ones who _caused_ those disappearances, that leaves four that we know were taken. And that means . . . _Nanoha shivered again. All of the students who disappeared had done so without a trace. _We saw Ranko round up the others and teleport away after the monster's barrier fell, so we know it's not that only those with magic powers can pass through. So only the living made it out of the barrier._

Fate was waiting for Nanoha outside the classroom, along with Arisa and Suzuka, but while the latter two were laughing and joking, Fate looked worried, and the reason why was concealed in the palm of her hand; a quick flash of the hand showed Nanoha the message on Fate's phone, a text from Lindy, but in her official capacity as commander of the Time-Space Administration Bureau's mission on Earth.

"So, where to first?" Arisa asked, corralling Nanoha and Fate with an arm over each one's shoulder. "Library, or shall we hit up the cafe? I know I could use something warm and sweet to chase away those bad dreams from last night!"

"Sorry, Arisa-chan, we've got to go do some work on a- a special project. We'll go for coffee and cakes tomorrow, I promise, my treat." Nanoha tried to give her friend a cheery smile as she slipped out from beneath Arisa's grasp, and then she and Fate headed for the exit as fast as they could manage without arousing suspicion.

Arisa was suspicious of the pair, but for different reasons. "Ahh, those two! I swear, they should just friggin' elope already!"

"Arisa!" Suzuka exclaimed, trying to hold down her giggles long enough to give the blonde girl a proper chastizing. "That's not very nice. We're too young to do something like that, for one."

"Ha! Is that the best you've got, Suzuka Tsukimura? No 'girls can't love girls'," Arisa said in a sing-song voice, trying to emulate Suzuka's high, sweet voice and curdling it horribly. "Not even a 'maybe they aren't head-over-heels in love with each other', just 'we're too young to do that'. So you admit we're on the same page, now it's just a matter of hashing out the terms!"

"A-ri-sa!" Suzuka cried out once more, scandalized. "This is a friendship we're talking about, not an auction! And what was with that voice! Who talks like that? Bad Arisa! No cake for you!"

"Hey! Low blow, Tsukimura!"

* * *

"Captain Haralown, what is the situation?" Nanoha asked immediately upon arriving at Fate's house, which drew a chuckle from Lindy and an outright howl of laughter from Arf.

"Whoa there, settle down, this isn't boot camp."

"You did send us a message signed 'from Captain Lindy Haralown, Mission Commander, TSAB UW-97 Survey Mission', so it sounded like pretty official business, Lindy-san." Nanoha stated, reading the titles off her phone.

". . . Oops," Lindy replied, chuckling behind her hand. "I should probably change my sig sometime. I only sent it from the official box because I was logged in to the TSAB network at the time. But I do need to show you two this, it's a missive from HQ concerning your friends from last night." That drew frowns from Nanoha and Fate both, which deepened once Lindy flipped on the projector and began displaying the information she had been sent.

"The . . . 'Puella Magi'? They're an organized group?" Nanoha wondered aloud.

"Yes and no. It would be more accurate to say a Puella Magi is a specific type of mage, and from what I've read, they're bad news. Their magic is an offshoot of Ancient Belkan techniques, which is bad enough, but then it gets worse." Fate stuck out her tongue and shook her head as if someone had just stuffed rotten fruit in her mouth upon hearing that news; Precia Testarossa had been searching for Belkan tech to power her resurrection device, which was not a point in favor of the strange silver-haired girl they had crossed blades with, in Fate's mind. _And there's worse?_ Fate thought, seeing from Nanoha's expression that she was thinking the same thing.

"Puella Magi can be created from anyone with even the slightest spark of magical potential, and the ritual to do so is, well, take a look." Lindy played a clip from the TSAB archives which got all three of her charges looking sick.

"Did that thing just _rip out _that girl's Linker Core?" Nanoha asked, staring wide-eyed at the image displayed before her.

"That's what the notes say. Apparently, it makes it easier for the girl to draw upon the power in her Core, and also gives the girl limited invulnerability; as long as the Soul Gem- that's their name for it, and pretty literal at that- is intact and has energy, the body will regenerate from any amount of damage, even, uh, disintegration it looks like.

"Here's the real problem though." Lindy continued, bringing up a new image- the black iron ball that Ranko had been so zealous in taking possession of at the end of the fight. "Apparently, once they've gone through that ritual, the Puella Magi girls can only replenish mana by drawing upon a negative energy source- their term is 'Grief Seed', and again, that's about the right of it; because the Linker Core is no longer within the body, it must maintain a certain amount of energy or it will cease to exist, along with the owner. Problem is, these things are a finite resource, created only from the aberrations which seem to spawn in response to a Puella Magi being created, or from one of the girls themselves when they die."

"That's horrible!" Nanoha exclaimed.

"Survival of the fittest," Fate mused, which put all eyes on her. Blushing slightly for having let her thoughts slip out like that, Fate pursed her lips and completed her train of thought. "It means they'll be like we were during the Jewel Seed Incident, their every encounter is a fight against the monster and their competitors. That would explain why Kanzaki went at us so hard last night- if all she had known was the Puella Magi way, she would have seen us as enemies.

"Now, here comes the worst part." Lindy poked the projector again, bringing up a larger, more detailed image of the creature who had been involved in the creation ritual. "This is an Incubator. These creatures are conjured magical beasts, similar to a familiar, who administer the creation ritual. According to the records, the ritual grants the new Puella Magi a 'wish' of sorts, releasing a large amount of nonquantifiable magical energy, and feeding the Incubator a similar amount of negative energy. In past encounters, the effects of some of these exchanges registered in the S-Rank-plus range, which means these creatures qualify as Lost Logia."

"A living Lost Logia. As if the normal kind that just lay on the ground weren't hard enough to find and seal." Fate glared at the projector.

"Cheer up, Fate-chan, think of it like that time when that cat swallowed a Jewel Seed!" Nanoha replied, trying to find a positive spin on the situation.

"Or we could _not_ go there. Blech!" Arf wrinkled her nose.

"Right, well locomotion aside, we need to find these guys ASAP. This comes from Gil Graham's office." Lindy indicated the projector and the information contained within. "Apparently the Deep Space Patrol Fleet has been having serious trouble with these Incubator creatures, and so there was a flag set for whenever a mention of them showed up in mission logs. Or even sensor records, it seems, as I hadn't filed an official report on this situation yet. That should tell you how much trouble they're causing though. Our orders are to put any Puella Magi we find into protective custody and hold them in AMF-equipped accommodations, in order to keep their Linker Cores from degrading any further, and to capture any Incubators on the planet and put them into stasis prison."

"That seems pretty harsh," Fate remarked.

"I know it seems that way, but it's really for the best. These girls weren't aware of the circumstances when they entered into the ritual, and we need to do all that we can to keep them from dying to mana exhaustion. That also means use a light touch when approaching them; we don't want any of these girls getting drained by fighting with us and dying for it."

"Fine, fine, choking the new kids to death on their own stupid system, unless of course one of 'em hurts Fate, 'cause then I'm gonna kill 'em the old-fashioned way." Arf growled.

* * *

"_Paging any executive officer to the front desk, executive officer, front desk, please respond._" Satori glared at her phone as she heard the page- the wording and repetition was a company code that meant "Him/her/it at the front desk is a problem, and an urgent one", and Satori wasn't in any sort of mood to deal with problems of the sort. At least there hadn't been two repetitions of the form- that would have meant "send in the Gespents, and don't stop shooting until the problem can be washed down the floor drain", but when Satori took a look at the man waiting at the desk, she wondered if the receptionist hadn't underestimated the threat.

Rin got there first, and she decided to cut to the chase. "Who the hell are you, and why should I not have you hauled outta here by security?"

"I am Professor Shu Shirakawa, with the Uminari Central School District by way of the Skyreach Partnership Project."

"That's nice for you." Rin replied, before leaning on the desk and making a point of stabbing at a key on the intercom. "Security, report to the front desk, and bring one of the dumpsters for burnable trash around front!"

"Real cute, but I think you will find that setting fire to a Skyreach employee is not going to enhance your standing when it comes to the next round of contract negotiations," Shu replied smoothly. "More to the point, as you are no doubt well aware, there was a large-scale engagement between the Divine Crusaders and a special operations organization based out of this very city. Two students were missing from my Applied Sciences class today, which concerned me greatly, but then, lo and behold! I find security camera footage from your shopping center here, showing none other than my missing students. Truancy is a crime, miss, and kidnapping is a worse one."

"So's espionage." Shu turned suddenly to face the speaker behind him, with a narrowing of the eyes being the only visible sign of his irritation.

"I beg your pardon . . ?" Shu replied, searching the speaker for identification.

"Daichi Miki. _Captain_ Daichi Miki, of the Mitikahara Constabulary, which you would have already known had you gone through the necessary procedures to obtain that footage legally."

"Petty bureaucratic threats do not change the facts of the matter." Shu replied, testily.

"Perhaps not, but the full security audit that the JSDF will be performing on the Uminari schools does. There was no defense grid, not even an evacuation or shelter-in-place plan, and this was the flagship Skyreach operation in Japan. I am not letting those children return there until the place doesn't look like an all-you-can-eat buffet for the DC."

"I fail to see how your method of property-destroying firefights is any safer, but no matter. Play your little games, Captain, but I expect to see evidence that those students are enrolled in an accredited educational program by the end of the week. Not that I expect a provincial operation like Mitikahara will measure up to the standards we've set in the Partnership Program, but I don't want them falling too far behind. Good day."

* * *

"So, opinions?" Satori asked, after having convened a group of relevant experts in her office and shown them the security tapes of the encounter with the esteemed Professor from Uminari.

"Yeah, I've got one; I'm gonna cut that sonofabitch's throat next time I see him." Sayaka barked. "Provincial? Ha!"

"While I'm not a nerd, and so couldn't care less what he said about the school," Kyoko put in, earning herself a deathly glare from Sayaka. "The guy is phonier than a 17-yen coin."

"I must, ah, concur with my future daughter-in-law's assessment," Captain Miki added, dryly. "He was very smooth, polished even, which is the sign of a criminal who has spent too much time rehearsing his alibi. My only question is, what's his break? He's interested in the kids, so he probably knows something about where they came from, I'm just not sure if he's a DC mole, Skyreach counter-intelligence, or playing his own game on Skyreach's dime."

"Now would be the point where I tell you that I scanned him with my Third Eye, and not only was his mind well guarded . . ." Satori re-wound the security footage to a specific point and ran it in slow-motion so that the others could see the slight flicker on Shu's face as his attention was drawn away from Rin. "He also noticed, and looked right at me through two floors of the building when I did so."

"Great, more superfreaks with unknowable motives. Just what we need." Kyoko growled. "Okay, new plan. Satori, get Homerun and Yamaguchi up here. And get the justice-lovers outta here."

"Okay, what the hell are you planning?" Sayaka demanded, fists on hips.

"Blueberry, you really don't want to know. And I think for legal reasons _you_ shouldn't know . . . Dad." Kyoko stated, smirking.

"Right, fine, whatever. Don't expect me to bail you out when this scheme blows up in your face." Sayaka replied, stalking for the door.

"Trust me, sweetie, if _this_ blows up in my face, you won't be able to do shit until I regenerate." Kyoko muttered once the Mikis had left the room.

"Do you mind telling _me_ what's going on at least, since presumably you expect me to be picking up the tab?" Satori asked, intrigued.

"Well, it's pretty simple- wait, can't you just read my mind?"

"Your lot are harder to read than normals, or even most youkai. You should be proud."

"Uh, okay?" Kyoko raised an eyebrow. "Er, wait, you mean me, specifically? Why?"

"Well, I only came in at the end of it, but from what I understand your amorous adventures with Sayaka drove the others to sharpen up their psychic barriers. Your own attempts to curtail the amount of 'leakage' gives you a similar resistance. But never mind that. What's this idea of yours?" Satori asked, moving past the personal conversation when Kyoko began to look nauseous.

"When I was fighting that little brat, I got a real good read on just how tough she is. I'm not real good with numbers, but let me break a few things on a test stand and I can show you exactly how much force it would take to destroy her."

"And you want me to build a weapon that can deliver that kind of damage?"

"Nooo . . ." Kyoko shook her head. "I want you to build a sniper rifle that can deliver enough damage to splatter that bitch all over the pavement like a watermelon tossed of the top of the Tower, and then I want Homerun to put that gun into use in an appropriate situation, like say from across town while they're having dinner and not paying attention."

"That seems . . . extreme."

"Yeah, I really don't care. I've been a Puella Magi for three and a half years now. Check with Nova if you want to, but that's _ancient_ by our standards. You might not think it to look at me, but I'm sick of fighting. I want nothing more to die . . . when I'm old and gray, after a long and happy marriage. Well, I don't know if I'm gonna get the gray part," Kyoko poked at her face, which had not changed one bit since the day she first Contracted. "But I'd sure like the rest of it. And Step 1 of that plan is putting these assholes in a hole in the ground before me and mine get hurt."

"I understand your concerns. However . . ." Kyoko gritted her teeth, marshaling her best arguments to counter whatever reservations Satori put forth. "What do you need Yamaguchi-san for?"

"That's, er . . ." Kyoko trailed off, not sure how to react to a lack of pushback. "I just figured we'd probably need some kinda special parts to make it work, so might as well get the black market guy in on the project from the get-go."

"I'm sure the Old Cat will be flattered by your high opinion of him, but I've got him on assignment right now for one, and also, you do remember that the official front of this operation is a manufacturing firm, and since we have a contract with Skyreach, I can just pick up the phone and have whatever we need shipped directly to the workshop?"

"Uh . . . huh. I guess it slipped my mind. I'm still getting used to this whole 'doing things on the level' business." Kyoko replied, with a bashful grin.

"That's assuming you actually start trying to do things on the level." Homura said, dryly, having entered Satori's office at the tail end of the conversation. The black-haired Puella Magi seemed to be as close to cheerful as she capable of being, but Kyoko and Satori could both feel the psychic pain hidden beneath that facade, chewing away at her from inside.

"Now, that's not very nice, Homura-chan!" Madoka added. "After all, it only took Nova 25,000 years to change her ways, I'm sure Kyoko will come around eventually!"

"Ouch," Kyoko replied with a theatric wince. "Pinkie scores a critical hit, as usual. Speaking of shooting things, Homerun, how do you feel about shooting some people in the head while they're not looking?"

"It depends. Do they deserve it?"

"They're the Wolkencritters." Kyoko replied. "And I'm having Three Eyes build you a sniper rifle that can shoot down a small moon to do it with."

"Well, I suppose . . ." Homura made it sound like she was being put upon, but the gleam in her eyes told a different story. "As long as you give me time to savor it afterwards."

* * *

For the Wolkenritter, the mission which lay before them was rather outside their area of expertise, and truth be told, not something they would have chosen to undertake. But a Knight of Ancient Belka staked her honor on never shirking from duty; if the circumstances absolutely warranted it, a retreat would be called, but to outright abandon a quest? Never. "Operations, are you ready?"

"Ready!" Signum nodded, taking her place.

"Logistics?"

"Ready!" Shamal spread her hands over the supplies she had prepared.

"Support?"

"Ayep!" Vita grinned.

"Commence operation!" Hayate commanded.

BGM: Edvard Grieg – Peer Gynt – "In the Hall of the Mountain King"

The first steps were simple enough the participants didn't need direction for them- Signum took up the brand-new wok, a replacement for the one that had been destroyed the last time Shamal tried cooking a dish from scratch, and put it upon the gas burner on the family stove. Meanwhile, Vita hoisted Hayate up on to her shoulders, so that Hayate could see what was going on. Hayate loved to cook, but with the way the kitchen was set up there was no way she could reach the burners to do anything terribly fancy. Enlisting her friends to be her hands sounded marginally easier than demolishing the kitchen and having it rebuilt at wheelchair-height, and so here they were.

"Oil!" Hayate commanded, and Shamal dumped a generous dab into the pan. The Knights' duties in the kitchen were predetermined by their temperaments- as much as Shamal suffered misfortune when in control of the pan, Signum was equally unsuited to prep work; she had a tendency to treat every blade the same as her Laevateinn, and Hayate's recipe did not call for vegetables that had been shredded to a pulp.

Vita was chosen to carry Hayate around because that way she was roughly at head-height to the other Wolkenritter. Zafira had offered to do the carrying duties, but the first time he had picked Hayate up, her head nearly went through the apartment's rather low ceiling. In any case, Vita wouldn't have it any other way- of the four, she was the most enthusiastic in her devotion to her current master. Shamal shared a look with Signum as she dumped the garlic and scallions in the pan, and after their long years of service, that glance was as good as telepathy. _Vita would cut off her own arm and serve it up for supper if Mistress Hayate asked her to!_

Now Vita was directed to bring Hayate in close for the most critical stage of the operation. A mistake here would mean going out for a meal . . . a long meal, while the house aired out from the stench of incinerated garlic. The aromatics were brown and sizzling when Hayate called for the cooking wine, and she couldn't help giggle as Signum pulled a fencer's dodge away from the sudden puff of flame that came when she was ordered to flare the pan.

"Meat!" Hayate called out next, leaning in to put a critical eye on the pan. "Soy sauce!" was the next call, and in it went, foaming and searing and eventually making a delightful smell. The spatula sped back and forth and the pan tilted up and down as Signum worked to make sure everything cooked and nothing burnt, while Hayate gestured and barked orders, a conductor overseeing a symphony of supper.

When the rice cooker finally beeped, calling an end to the preparations, Signum looked to Shamal again, and a "pulling" gesture told her that the Lady of the Lake was still on the same page; _that was more work than the time the Tyrant of Terin-Desh_ _made us take his pet hydra for a walk!_

_But worth every bit of effort,_ they concluded, seeing Hayate's face as she was placed in her seat at the head of the table.

* * *

_It is the little things in life that sometimes make the biggest difference. Such as this most excellent chair._ A twenty-year veteran of the Kriegsmarine, Mayer von Branstein was not a man to loll about in idle luxury, but he appreciated touches that aided in the performance of his duties- the heated cupholder, for one, and the notch in the armrest to permit a man to sit comfortably without removing his sword scabbard from his belt beforehand. And the control switches that sat just before his fingers on the armrests, that let Captain von Branstein pull all of the relevant information before his gaze when things decided to go directly to hell.

The last feature was coming in most handy at the moment, for von Branstein's command, the submersible assault carrier _Orcus_, had just abruptly opened the muzzle doors for two of its forward torpedo tubes. There were only supposed to be three people aboard ship who could do that- the Captain himself, the weapons officer, and the chief engineer through use of the master maintenance lockout key. Both of those latter individuals were looking at von Branstein and respectfully asking him "what the hell is going on, sir?", so that ruled them out as suspects, and a quick inspection of the control panels on the captain's chair showed that he hadn't accidentally hit the switches either. To make matters worse, there were objects of an unidentified nature loaded in both tubes. _Definitely time to send this up the chain_, the Captain thought, paging his boss to the bridge.

Valcyone stepped on to the bridge just moments later- her command center was only one compartment aft of the bridge, and she had already noticed the flurry of unusual activity. "What is the matter, Captain?" she asked, taking a tone of polite curiosity, not accusation. The leader of the DC had the utmost faith in the captain of her flagship, and even if she didn't, she knew better than to undermine a fellow officer in public.

"We have an unusual situation developing with the forward torpedo tubes. How do you wish to proceed?" von Branstein asked, tilting his screen to present the problem to Valcyone, who snarled when she read the situation.

"Permit me to investigate the compartment, Captain, I think I know what's going on here, but stand ready for action if it turns out to be something else."

"As you command," the Captain replied, but Valcyone was already stalking from the compartment with purposeful speed.

* * *

"Ahh, I am a genius," Alchemie hummed to herself as she sat upon the #3 torpedo tube, which contained her latest and greatest creation. Then, without warning, a beam of coherent light cracked through the space just above her head, so close that Alchemie could feel a sunburn forming on her scalp from the spillover of radiant energy.

"Eee! Quit shooting! I'm a friendly!" Alchemie cried out, tumbling off her perch in favor of cowering behind the torpedo-launching machinery. The _Orcus_' eight forward torpedo tubes were layed out in a flat line on the deck, instead of the traditional double columns of submarines of old. This arrangement made it easier for the crew to service the tubes and their autoloaders, but it meant that Alchemie's choice of hiding spots was less than ideal, especially considering the height of her attacker.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize," Valcyone said in a darkly sarcastic snarl. "When the equipment on my ship started malfunctioning, my first thought was 'saboteur', not . . . what the hell _are_ you doing, exactly?"

"I-ice cream?" Alchemie ventured, daring to peek over the edge of her cover.

"Ice cream?! What does that have to do with the torpedo tubes?"

"Well, it has to be stirred and chilled," Alchemie replied, as though it were obvious. Valcyone gave her Incubator a dirty look, and motioned for her to explain with the beam gun. "Alright, calm down, meanie. Watch." Alchemie toggled the loading cycle on the torpedo tube, which caused it to eject the object currently inside- a torpedo, inserted backwards. "I put the ingredients in the propulsion chamber. With the propeller blades exposed to the water flowing over the bow, it makes them spin, which turns the turbine blades inside to churn the ice cream, and the flow bypass chills the mix."

"That's as ingenious as it is idiotic," Valcyone murmured. "Say, is that mint chocolate chip?" the leader of the DC asked, looking at the brown-flecked green substance revealed when Alchemie removed the engine cover on the torpedo.

"No, silly, lime and coffee-bean. There's cherry cheesecake in Tube #5 though."

"Right, silly me." Valcyone rolled her eyes, before stepping on the load controls for the other tube. "This is compensation for when I'm going to have to explain to Captain von Branstein and the command crew what happened," said Valcyone as she hefted the other torpedo up on to the shoulder of her suit. "Also, you do know there's an ice cream maker in the rec room, right?"

"I am _not_ going to sit the basement of the largest, most powerful warship in Human history and turn a hand crank, thank you very much!"

"So borrow an air wrench from Maintenance. That's gotta be easier than washing out two torpedoes by hand," Valcyone replied, giggling as she watched Alchemie slap her forehead. "Good thing you spent more time thinking your Wish through, huh?"

"Not. Funny." the human-ized Incubator huffed. "If we fail, we won't get another chance to set things right."

"I'm well aware of that fact. You've only harped on it _every week_ since I made my Contract!" Valcyone sighed. "It'd be nice to have at least one other set of shoulders to carry this burden. I'm speaking metaphorically, by the way. I've got this just fine." the DC leader spoke quickly, to forestall an overly literal misinterpretation of the situation by Alchemie. "And no, that monster you have chained up in the labs doesn't count."

"I've explained to you before why we can't just churn out Contracts like . . . ahh, nevermind where that metaphor was going."

"Well, since we're stuck outsourcing our anti-mage work to people you neither trust nor like, why don't you explain it to me again?"

"You want to know the reason, the _real_ reason why I haven't just contracted up a dozen girls, stuck them all in Guarlions for good measure, and yoked this whole world to do our bidding, instead of taking it by pieces and scraps like we're doing?"

"Yeah, that'd be about the size of it," Valcyone replied, giving Alchemie a glare that contained a lethal dose of sarcasm.

"Because that only fixes the problem, and we need to solve it." Alchemie stated, earning her an even more skeptical stare. _Strange, I wasn't aware a Human face could contort so._

"Follow me here. And actually follow me, before the ice cream melts." Alchemie hefted her own container and started back towards her quarters, with Valcyone shaking her head in disbelief as she followed. _Good thing this ship is mostly automated, so I don't have to run into anybody and explain all this!_

"If we were going to go for the fix, we wouldn't even need to make any Contracts at all- I'd just go to the Incubator enclave and put a knife to their throats, get them to make me the Overseer of Purifiers. With a full Communion, we could enact the Omega protocol."

"That's the 'Ragnarok' thing you mentioned?"

"In your language, yes." Alchemie agreed. "With that in place I simply snap my fingers and _woof,_ no more Balmarian invasion fleet. And that's where the problem lies- it wouldn't be you Humans stopping them. So next time- and there _will_ be a next time, I assure you. There are older and fouler things out there then the Balmarians. In either case, it might be a thousand years or more, but something else will come along. Only this time, the Enclave is no longer here. Maybe they re-started the Project, or moved on, or were simply destroyed by their own stupidity. And this time, Earth doesn't have the power to save itself."

"That's all well and good, but . . . what if we lose?"

"Then we damn well better go down swinging, and make sure whatever beats us is hard enough for the challenges that lay ahead."


	4. Welcome to the Machine

**Episode 4 : Welcome to the Machine**

"You know, I've realized something." Saya Browning was taking a leisurely pace along the mall promenade, focusing her attention on anything other than schoolwork. In the two weeks since Professor Shirakawa delivered his ultimatum, the plan of how to handle the situation had more-or-less-entirely consisted of stashing the "refugees" at the Mitikahara school. There was no need for additional security, per se; all of the other Puella Magi save Koishi, Ranko, and Cirno were formally enrolled at the school, and all of them (even Kyōko) were making a solid attempt at attending classes. Everyone in the Tirei operation agreed that anything capable of getting through 8 Puella Magi could probably simply blast the town off the face of the earth, which would render the security situation entirely moot.

"Oh, don't you say it! I will punch you right straight in your fat, stupid face!" Hotaru fumed. Ranko had been able to get away with ducking out, as she had made such an impression at Uminari with her human persona that no one expected to see her keep up the charade of functioning on a normal level. However, that left Hotaru stuck in classes, and no amount of Charlotte's presence could make up for that.

"I, uh, _don't_ hate this place . . ." Saya replied, almost surprised of the answer herself. It was, however, close enough to what Hotaru had expected her to say that it still triggered a violent response, but then the firefly caught the negation and faltered slightly. Meanwhile Saya was smirking, as she had been expecting and maybe even relishing a physical altercation, and so she was already throwing a counter which was fast enough to actually pick off Hotaru when she stumbled.

"Well, I _do!_ So there!" Hotaru snapped, after their clash became frozen in place. "Also, not bad. Seems like the self-defense stuff is starting to sink in. Although . . ." The firefly finished her thought by kicking out Saya's forward foot, leaving her to stumble into Hotaru, who grabbed her blocking hand to keep Saya from tumbling all the way to the pavement. "Gotta follow through or break away."

"Yeah, well, if it's a real fight, I'll do that."

"I'm serious here! You need to be on your game, all the time. Ya never know when the DC might make a try for you, and if you die, I'll look bad! Hey, are you listening to me?" Hotaru poked Saya in the shoulder.

"Yeah, 'm here, just looking to see if you jinxed us or not. On the subject of training, though, who are they sticking us with this week? Mami, or do we have to deal with Hitomi again?" That question got only the sound of grinding teeth for a reply, which caused Saya to frown. "Oops . . . I didn't mean to upset you. Hitomi bothers you, doesn't she? Because of the, er . . ." Saya trailed off, rubbing a thumb over her left middle finger instead of uttering the dreaded "P-word" out loud.

"Meh. It doesn't bother me any worse than it'd bother you to have your tongue torn out and shoved down your throat until you choke," Hotaru replied in a conversational tone of voice. "Seriously, do you even listen to yourself? You are the least tactful person I know, and between me 'n Cirno, that's saying something!"

". . . I said I was sorry."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, my real problem with her is she's got _my_ color. So where am I gonna go when I finally do get my ring?"

"You could just be a second green, couldn't you? I mean, there's three reds."

"Yeah, but those don't count- Nova's gem is actually solid white, like an opal, and Ranko's is black. It's an Incubator thing apparently, they're always that same red color when they turn on. We'd have to see the DC's Incubator in a fight to be sure, but to hell with that!"

"Then challenge her to a duel or something and take her color?"

"I don't think you can change 'em. Why are you so damn hung up on this anyway?"

"Because, it doesn't make any sense. I like understanding how and why things work, and Hitomi, well, doesn't. She doesn't fit in with them, and that weirds me out."

"I know the answer to that, but if we have to go there, I promise you I will hate you forever and a year more." Hotaru snarled.

"You say that like you don't already hate me forever, or at least until the sun goes cold!" Saya smirked as she replied.

"Okay, fine. But you owe me ice cream, got it?" Hotaru sucked in a breath and blew it out hard. "It goes like this; you know how the Incubators worked, with their energy-harvesting scheme and all? Well, back then Nova was still one of the evil furballs, she- it, I suppose?- told Hitomi a tale about how her friends were all leaving her behind with their cool new magic powers. And so Hitomi bought it hook, line, and sinker, because she desperately wanted to be able to keep up with her friends. Then Hitomi learned why you don't make a deal with the devil in order to be one of the cool kids, and she sorta hung up her axe after that. To make matters worse, she didn't exactly get over that 'I need to be equal' bit, and _that_ got her pinched by the big baddie and held as a hostage. So the moral of the story, of course, is Contracts are a bad idea, which is why Char has told it to me at least a dozen times, and that's why I don't like talking about it- and are you even listening to me?" The lack of attention set Hotaru boiling with rage, and she turned to slap the blonde girl silly, but in doing so, she caught sight of what had Saya distracted: A set of goons in black tactical gear carrying compact guns and other nasty toys, moving towards the girls with intent. "Well, shit!"

BGM : .3K – DDR SuperNOVA – "PARANOiA Respect"

Hotaru and Saya were at the railing by the time the tacticals realized they had been made, and were over the side before the shooting started. The drop was just over three meters, barely an inconvenience with the adrenaline shouting in the girls' veins, but it turned out there wasn't any much more room to maneuver on the main floor, with another detachment of the mysterious troops covering the main entrance. "Well, you wanted a real fight," Hotaru snarled, pressing her thumb to the emerald gem on her bracelet to activate the homing function.

"Yeah, well, changed my mind," Saya muttered, triggering her own homing beacon.

"Oh, to hell with that! We're goin' through 'em!" Hotaru rushed forward, throwing a double-handful of danmaku before her the instant that the other shoppers cleared the line of fire. The shots struck one of the troopers high in the chest and knocked him back a step, but failed to do much more as the spellfire splattered against the man's vest in brilliant green sparks. "Oh, come on! Energy-absorbing armor? Bullshit!"

The troopers' guns fired with sharp coughs of gas, hurling thin metal darts through the air, and when one lightly grazed Hotaru, there came a crack of lightning between the weapon and the dart. "Ow! Damnit!" Hotaru swore, clutching at her numbed limb. Horror washed through Saya as she heard the guns begin charging for another round, but then it broke against a reserve of will that the blonde girl wasn't aware she had.

Saya found herself taking a back seat in her own mind as the need to survive took over. Bolts of energy flew from the spell projector on her outstretched hand- not at the attackers with their specialized armor, but at a decorative fountain in the atrium, which certainly was _not_ resistant to the sorcerous fires, and exploded into a billowing cloud of steam. Then Saya caught Hotaru's arm and pulled the unresisting girl into the steam, where the shooters couldn't see the pair to hit them, even if their electroshock guns would function in the humid air.

"Captain, what do we do now? She threw up some kinda smokescreeen!" The man screaming into his radio was nominally in charge of the team inside the mall, but he had been chosen for his ability to follow orders rather than any tactical acumen, and the orders were to bag the blonde girl and get out before the time limit was up. The first part hadn't happened yet and the second was bearing down quickly, and being caught between those two pressures had shaken what little nerve the man possessed.

"_Damnit! Just shoot her then, we still get paid part of the money to get her outta Tirei's hands, even if it's just into a box._" That was something concrete the team leader could hang on to, and he found himself bellowing out the order to shoot almost without realizing it, at the same time fingering the selector switch that deactivated the experimental electroshock system and turning his gun back into an SMG. The entire team opened fire at once, sending a shower of bullets ripping through the clouded space Saya and Hotaru were using to hide, enough that the grim math of probability guaranteed the eventual outcome. But before that point arrived, the supersonic _boom_ of a weapon being swung so hard it tore the air itself announced that the equation had changed. A body sailed off the upper floor, trailing a red rain of ruin behind it to crash onto the wrecked fountain, and Saya and Hotaru peeked out from behind their cover to see what had happened.

Hitomi Shizuki was what happened, although to the would-be assassins, she may as well have been the punishment of the gods, or a natural disaster. A second trooper went over the railing, after being impaled upon the spike capping Hitomi's greataxe and then hurled aside with the same motion and same amount of consideration as a shovelful of snow. Hitomi let the weapon lead her, turning the axe broadside as it passed over her shoulder to block a fusillade from the now completely panicked team leader, and even as she twisted the weapon to right it, her bottom hand came free of the haft and snapped forward, loosing a smaller throwing axe that hadn't existed until a moment before that sailed directly into her attacker's face.

The beacon bracelets had carried Hotaru's words to Hitomi's ears as if she had been standing next to the little youkai once they had been activated, so she knew that using her spells on the troopers below was unlikely to do any real damage. At the same time though, having beams of jade-green spellfire explode in one's face was never beneficial to holding a precise aim, which was why Hitomi gave the troopers on the floor a generous dose as she leaped down. Landing with a crack of steel on tile, Hitomi was immediately forced to raise her axe to deflect a slew of blind fire. _Well, apparently the suppressive fire was a waste. They didn't have any aim to disrupt! _Hitomi realized, gritting her teeth as a round creased her side, while screams filled the air behind her as the overshoots rattled the storefronts, and those sounds cut through her in a way that no physical weapon could.

In general, Saya's assessment of Hitomi was correct- the green-haired Puella Magi did not have the taste for battle that her friends possessed, and she tended not to make rash and impulsive decisions outside of the one which had led to her Contract. With her one red line crossed, however, her nature meant that Hitomi was making the _calm_ and _reasoned _decision to let out a bloodcurdling scream of challenge and charge into the shooters. The first of her foes Hitomi struck down with another supersonic slice, and the man's head simply vanished from sight as if it were a magic trick. Her fury not nearly spent, Hitomi spun and brought her axe around to bear, splitting another shooter completely apart from crown to crotch, and then she somersaulted over the haft of her buried weapon, using the momentum to pull it free from the floor.

At this point, Hotaru also figured out how to overcome her attackers' special armor, a plan she executed with one of her signature flying kicks. Hotaru struck her target in the shoulder, but this was according to plan as it threw him off-balance, at which point Hotaru tumbled over the trooper's shoulder and seized his head as she passed. What Hotaru did then was technically a throw, but with his feet on the floor and hers still in the air, his body didn't move, but rather the shooter's neck was forced to absorb all the energy of the attack, and it failed. That left only one of the pack, who raised his hands to indicate he was open to negotiation, to which Hitomi placed her axe to his throat to indicate she was not.

At that moment, the elaborate windows over the main doors blew in, courtesy of a missile launched from a Lion. The wisps of smoke and sheets of glass blew away to reveal three AFs hovering just outside the building. "Great, this day keeps getting worse!" Hotaru muttered, pulling out a fan of Spellcards.

"Indeed it does . . . for them." Hitomi replied, grinning as she saw the flicker of police lights reflecting off the scenery outside. Moments later, the Lions broke and scattered as Sayaka's Interceptor pulled up to the front door, leading a full squad of Gespensts and a Centipede carrier as well.

* * *

"You need to see this," Alchemie said as she used the closet as a doorway into Valcyone's quarters. Without waiting for the DC leader's approval or even an acknowledgment of her presence, Alchemie snatched up the remote and switched the suite's video screen on, then dialed in a satellite news broadcast.

"I wondered why we came up to antenna depth," Valcyone muttered as she set down her reader- loaded with a light novel instead of status reports for once- and rolled over to look at the screen. Off duty and in her quarters, the girl who went by the title of Valcyone had shed her Wish-granted armor and was instead wearing a tank top and punk jeans. Aside from the katana she had reflexively conjured from her Soul Gem signet at the intrusion, she could have been mistaken for an ordinary teenager at the moment. Hanging her head off the end of the bed gave Valcyone an upside-down perspective on the situation, but that didn't make the report on the news look any better. The flashy graphics and inset images were intended to present the attack on the Mitikahara mall as a somber, horrifying affair, but that effect was ruined by a Lion that had been put into the fountain in a piledriver maneuver, its legs flopped apart in an obscene fashion.

"What's the deal? I don't recall authorizing a strike recently. Did they use some wrecks and fake this up or something?" Valcyone asked.

"No, this is partly my fault. I put out a bounty on that weird girl they were claiming they 'rescued' from our clutches down in Uminari, and I made sure it went out where Thomas's 'Independent Action Group' would see it." Alchemie grinned nastily. "Figured either we get the girl so we can figure out what her deal is, or we're rid of those filthy pirates, either way it's a win."

"Hey, does that mean we got a report on how well the diffusion armor worked?" Valcyone asked, referring to one of the experimental pieces of kit Thomas was permitted to "steal" when he broke away from the Crusaders.

"Not well enough, obviously." Alchemie replied. "The initial news report didn't mention any casualties on the Tirei side of things, so either he didn't bring the gear, or didn't bring enough to get the job done."

"Useless is as useless does, I guess."

Someone on the production team must have realized how silly the crashed AF looked, because the view cut away quickly to a podium armed with a forest of microphones, behind which stood Satori, looking severely displeased._"I shall take at most three questions, so you had best make them count."_ Satori declared, setting off a sour murmur among the assembled press.

"Okay, I think I like this girl," Valcyone declared. "Too bad she works for the bad guys."

"_This is unprecedented! Do you really think you and your company can survive trying to bully the media in this way?"_ The bellicose accusation came from deep in the pack and the cameras locked in on Satori in response, trying to pile on the pressure.

"_Take this for your answer: Two questions remain. How_ever. . ." Satori leaned into the microphone bank to overpower the sudden chorus of outrage. "_If the rest of you ladies and gentlemen will remove this fool from the room, I will give you that question back._"

"Ooh, she's good!" Valcyone cackled as the cameras panned to show the foolish blowhard getting shoved out of the crowd and to the door by a crush of his outraged peers. Satori was showing a predatory smile as the press conference returned to a semblance of order.

"_During today's confrontation with the Divine Crusaders, a young woman was spotted doing battle with their forces, dressed in a type of form-fitting armor that didn't conform to any known type of Armored Frame. What, ah, exactly was that she was wearing, and how does it work?_"

"_Obviously for reasons of operational security I cannot discuss details here, but it was an implementation of what we're calling 'Extra-Over Technology'. EOT is derived from data gathered on the techniques used to create the Armored Frames._"

"_Yes, but- it seems impossible that you could pack that much power into such a small suit!_" At this, Satori held up two fingers and waggled them, sweeping her gaze across the room and then settling her focus on the young reporter who blurted out the question. When there was no movement to eject the man from the room, Satori lowered one finger, squared her shoulders, and began her explanation.

"_What we have is no more impossible than the Armored Frames themselves, but the technology is not yet ready for mass production-_" Satori's explanation abruptly disappeared, as a hard black plastic square slammed into the video monitor, shattering it.

"Ahh, oops!" Valcyone giggled as she noticed what it was she had used to silence the farfetched explanation- her reader, which was in as bad a shape as the monitor.

"Oops, she says," Alchemie grumbled, rolling her eyes. "If I was as cruel a taskmaster as you, I'd haul your ass down to the engineering compartments and make you rebuild those, like you did to me with the torpedoes!"

"Hey, I said I was sorry. Besides, that 'extra-over' whatever was ridiculous! Of course they can't 'mass-produce' their results. You can't just squirt out magic on an assembly line! Extra-over my dead body!"

"Ridiculously brilliant, you mean." Alchemie glared at her Contractee. "Our Armored Frames are sufficient to overwhelm conventional infantry and armor, not a horde of veteran Puella Magi and whatever-the-hell their friends from the other side are, and with the press eating out of that girl's hands, she just neutralized any hope we had of blackmailing them into sidelining their strongest assets. It's not often you get to watch somebody announce the very end of your hopes and dreams at a live press conference. And to think, I had been coming here to bring you good news."

"Oh, do cheer up, spoilsport!" Valcyone replied, rolling over and pulling Alchemie into a sudden hug. "After all, didn't you pick me for my tactical brilliance and ability to find a way out of tight situations like this? Now what's the good news?"

"I picked you, because you were what I had available." Alchemie glared up at Valcyone as she shook off the hug. "The fact that you turned out to be useful was just a plus. As for the good news, here. And try not to throw it at anything, please?" Valcyone tried to glare at Alchemie for the admonishment that came with her personal reader, but the little Incubator glared much harder.

"Does this mean what I think it means? 'I want to be on the winning side of this war, and am convinced yours is it. Please arrange for extraction from Mitikahara at the earliest possible convenience. Will bring useful information along with excellent skills.' This has gotta be a trap, right?"

"That's what I thought, but I've been digging into it, and it seems legit. Now we just have to go in and get her."

"Her? You know who this is already?" Valcyone looked up from the reader in surprise.

"No, but if you think about it, it has to be one of their Puella Magi, I mean, who else would have 'excellent skills' that we might want?"

"I suppose. Good news is that means you can kill two birds with one stone."

"I really hate it when you grin like that. Nothing good ever comes from you grinning like that." Alchemie replied, feeling her stomach do flips as she met her Contractee's feline smile.

"What? It's just a simple smash-n-grab raid. Smash them and grab your defector, simple right?"

"And what are _you_ going to be doing while I'm busy with all that?"

"Oh, nothing much, just a little something on the side, to confuse them."

"Uh-huh." Alchemie glared at Valcyone. "Well, let me just preemptively say 'I told you so', because I doubt I'll get the chance when we're both either dead or in prison from your lunacy."

"Oh, relax, I still need a couple days to get everything in place."

"Well, that makes me feel much better!" Alchemie deadpanned.

"And here I was expecting you to say that made things worse."

"No, it's better because now I have time to find a box sturdy enough to lock you in so you don't try going through with this cockamamie plan!"

* * *

"Jeez! Security's pretty shoddy on this system-" Nue bit her tongue as she realized she was talking out loud. While Miko let the chimera have free reign on the computers, even letting her have access to a small expense account to get anything she needed to improve operations, Nue didn't want to advertise the fact she was doing something rather unauthorized. Specifically, she was setting up a back door into Tirei's main computer network; Nue had recently discovered the phenomenon known as "internet gaming", but this brought with it a new set of trouble, for all the good games required an account and a credit card whose billing address lined up with the IP address used to log in. There were two solutions available to Nue, either step outside the border and get a card through a local bank, or set up a proxy server on Tirei's network, and she had chosen the one that she could do without getting out of her seat, or (shudder) having to possibly deal with Reimu Hakurei asking her what she was doing outside the Border. "Still, I woulda thought Satori would have a better lid on things. Otherwise you're gonna get somebody cutting into the top secret files . . . just like- oh, hell!" Feeling sick sweat pop out across her body, Nue dug into the activity logs, grabbing screenshots for evidence where she could before scrambling to her feet. _I guess the noobs get to live to see tomorrow. This needs fixed, and NOW. _"Miko! Get in here!"

* * *

"Yo! Homerun! Time to-" Kyōko's greeting upon arriving at the mostly empty warehouse known as "Tirei Annex" was thoroughly overwritten by the firing of a Barret M82 rifle, the so-called "Light Fifty". The monster sniper rifle sounded like the trump of Doom, and it set a figure at the other end of the building to swinging on a hangman rope. "Ow! Damnit! What the hell was that?"

"Practice." Homura replied simply, flipping off her earmuffs as she stood up.

"Yeah, well, warn me next time. That hurt!" Kyōko snapped, raising the finger encircled by her Soul Gem signet both to show that it was currently expending energy to regenerate the redhead's eardrums and also to deliver her thoughts on the matter.

"You're the one who asked me to take out the Wolkenritter. If you'd prefer that I don't I can always stop."

"Yeah, no, that's still on the menu. But we've got orders from the Chief Executive Eyeball, she needs the space."

"Did she explain why? And not to be rude, but why you? I was hoping to get a ride home." Homura hefted the massive rifle off the floor and smirked slightly. "This thing is just a bit too big to fit into my armory, and I don't expect Sayaka's father will like having to field the calls if I were to walk home with it."

"Oh, I have a car. Mami and I are starting to practice driving after dark, as we're the only ones who look close enough to the right age to pull it off. That's the next item on the list though, figuring out if we can age up any. I can't imagine you and Pinkie and the rest want to go through life constantly getting busted for truancy." Kyōko stated with a fang-filled grin.

"No, that would definitely not do. And let me guess, our know-nothing Incubator knows nothing?"

"Ugh, don't remind me," Kyōko frowned. "Nova decided to dive into the Bad Old Days when I asked, talking about how it's only been an eyeblink in her terms that us Humans have had good enough nutrition to noticeably age during a Puella Magi's uptime, blah blah blah. Actually, I got the sense that she was worried about it, and you know how when she gets worried . . ."

". . . she starts talking so much that it becomes a hazard to her health." Homura finished the thought for Kyōko. "Nice to see things are settling in to a routine."

"Hey! Don't jinx it!"

"Right. Did they explain why I'm losing my shooting range?" Homura then asked, as she started down to the other end of the building.

"Apparently they're shipping in some stuff and they need a place to set it up." Kyōko replied before letting out a sharp whistle as she saw what Homura had been shooting at. There was a Lion hanging from a gantry, using the thick concrete wall as a backstop for the big rounds being shot at it, and the suit had been filled with ballistic gel for completeness' sake, if the stain on the wall behind the missing head was anything to go by. "Nice shot."

"I wish I could agree, but it was my third shot, and I was aiming for the torso." Homura grimaced.

"That bad, huh?"

"That bad. The pain never goes away now. Eirin says it's caused by a disjunction of some sort, continually affecting me."

"Where the hell's that coming from?" Kyōko asked, puzzled. "Didja piss me off in a past cycle or something?"

"I don't know, but if I find out who or what is causing it, well, I hope you ordered extra rounds for your superweapon."

"I'll do that, next time I see Satori- er, maybe the _next_ next time I see Satori," said Kyōko, jumping a bit as she saw the actual Satori standing at the door. "What's up?"

"My delivery. Which will be arriving in 15 minutes, so I would recommend that you two be somewhere else, unless you're planning to study how much it corrupts your Soul Gems to have a transport plane make a VTOL landing on your heads."

"Alright, alright, we're going. Jeez!" Kyōko gave a desultory sort of wave and headed for the door.

"Satori-san, if there's cargo coming in, may I leave my rifle behind, or will it be a bother for the work crews to retrieve it?" Homura asked, and after receiving an nod she stashed the weapon in the little enclosure that served as office space for the annex, then hurried to catch up with Kyōko. "Kyōko, let's go get dinner! My treat."

"Uh, sure? But what's with you tonight?" Kyōko asked, turning suddenly and pressing her forehead to Homura's in a way that was barely not a collision. "Is this disjunction or whatever starting to rot your brain?"

"Not exactly . . ." Homura grinned in a very un-Homura-like way and manifested her buckler and pulled a fistful of cash from the dimensional pocket within. "I figured since the _estimable_ Satori Komeiji was going take her frustrations out on us, the least she could do is provide compensation."

"Homerun, you're a devil, you know that?" Kyōko replied.

"And, just what do you mean to imply?"

"That I love you more than ever when you're like this," Kyōko explained, only half in jest.

"Are you sure you want to admit that with a channel open?" Homura gave a grin that lived up to the accusation of deviltry laid upon her.

"Gah! You really are a devil! You're going to get me killed, or worse, I'm going to get Pinkie Pouted at!"

* * *

That the annex building should become a landing pad was due to a bit of misplaced foresight- Satori had purchased the warehouse as a hedge against the need for future expansion of the manufacturing lines, and because of that, a retractable roof had been installed during renovation in order to facilitate the emplacement of large pieces of equipment. _Well, I suppose that's technically what's happening now, just not in the usual manner._ Satori smirked as she heard the whine of an approaching jet, and motioned to the crew accompanying her. Moments later the sky was lit up with powerful searchlights, which served two purposes; the first was to mark the site for the arriving aircraft and the second, oddly enough, was camouflage. Being near the river, the air above the annex was chilly and damp, conditions which caused a considerable amount of the harsh light from the powerful arc lamps to scatter in all directions from the site. To anyone on the ground, it would be as though there was a curtain of light between them and the arriving aircraft.

First in was a Skylifter, the workhorses of the Skyreach Project construction efforts. Aside from the structural modifications made in order to accommodate the fusion engines and VTOL flight, the Skylifter fit the same fat cigar-shaped profile of cargo planes since the dawn of jet propulsion, and even the stylized soaring arrow Skyreach insignias on the sides of the body and tail did much to relieve the plane's mundane, utilitarian looks.

The second aircraft, however, made up for that entirely. A brawny, thick flying wing design, this craft was also propelled by fusion plants driving ram-air thrusters, but here the intakes were sharply raked back, like a 50's muscle car that had learned to fly, and the entire machine was painted in a deep sky blue metallic shade, with gold and chrome accenting. This machine drew a raised eyebrow from Satori as it dropped neatly into the space provided, and her dubious expression redoubled as the pilot vaulted down from the cockpit.

"Hiya! Irm Kazahara, chief test pilot for Tesla-Leicht Industries, and I must say I'm _very_ pleased to meet you!" Tall and lanky, Irm had a huge smile plastered on his face, and was exuding an aura of charm that was as limp as his hair after the eight-hour flight.

"I can see that. Satori Komeiji, CEO of Tirei Hyperdyamics. I should give you fair warning, try anything more than a handshake and I'll disarticulate you." Satori replied evenly, though she did offer her hand.

"Well, good to know where I stand," said Irm, still grinning ear-to-ear.

"Ah, I see you've met the Fabulous Flying Manchild already." This came from the pilot of the Skylifter, and now it was Satori's turn to be put back a step. _She looks more like a sister to me than my actual sister! _"Just because she resembles me, doesn't give you call to go after her, Irm." Turning to the slightly flustered Satori, the newcomer introduced herself. "Ring Mao, Chief of Engineering for Tesla-Leicht. I look forward to seeing what you've done here."

"She threatened to disarticulate me, for a starter." Irm put in, although he didn't seem to be too put out by it.

"Well, it seems we resemble each other in more ways than one, in that case." Ring observed, while Satori led the pair to her car.

"This is not to say I _mind_ your presence Irm, but why did you come along? We could have arranged an escort for the Skylifter, and I wouldn't expect you to want to risk a prototype for something like this."

"Nepotism, is why." Ring interjected, although with enough sarcasm to keep it from being an indictment. "His father is the head of R&amp;D, and so of course he keyed the prototype so only Irm could fly it. Actually, that's not quite fair, Irm here is an excellent fighter in his own right. This job takes a certain hot-blooded spirit, and he has it in spades. And live combat data would be considerably useful."

"Well, I'm certain you'll be getting plenty of that soon enough. We're overdue for another round of harassment from the DC, and I'm not sure the flap at the mall counted toward that score." Satori paused for a moment, as the gears turned. "I must say, your group certainly managed to get into the game quite quickly. Considering the advantages we've had here, that's very impressive." The statement implied a question, and surprisingly enough, the answer came from Irm.

"You might say we had a head start, Miss. We had been working on the Tesla Drive for some time, and the design work for my Grungust- ah, excuse me, the 'G-class Mobile Assault Platform'," Irm couldn't help but roll his eyes at Ring after correcting himself. "We started in on it two years ago."

"Two _years?_" Satori exclaimed, her tone slipping as her mind spun to try and place the date.

"Yeah. Have you read the _Poetic Edda_? I'll take that look as a no, please don't disarticulate me. Well, in that work it describes the end of the world coming as a dreadful, unending storm, and I do believe I recall that you had a pretty bad, unnatural weather in the spring two years ago."

"What are you trying to say?" Satori asked quickly. _I think I get where he's going with this, but I'm sure I won't like where we end up._

"What Irm is trying to say is that he's a horrible literature nerd and we haven't been working him nearly hard enough." Ring cut in. "But more to the point, we don't believe the Divine Crusaders came by their strength honestly. There are those who believe that our world has come under outside influence, that 'messengers from space', if I may be so bold, have been meddling in our affairs. Most people who become believers profess their beliefs openly, and end up congregating together in a place befitting their nature, namely the looney bin.

"However, some of us have tempered our beliefs with skepticism and common sense, and chose to direct our efforts elsewhere. The Tesla-Leicht Institute is exactly as our motto states; a center for application of advanced research. We simply have the misfortune, as my mother likes to put it, of living in interesting times. And so, today we apply what we know to the effort of securing the future of our world from the unseen hand pressing upon us. Sorry, I seem to have gotten a bit preachy there," Mao added, with a slightly embarrassed smile. "All the same, I expect you know much of this. Certainly, the person you sent with your emissary to make the initial contact with us was quite . . . exceptional." Satori nodded, too deep in thought to answer at the moment. _What the hell, you only live once, right?_

"Just one question for you both," Satori was unable to conceal an impish grin as she put the question to her guests once the car arrived at Tirei Tower. "Will you be terribly disappointed to find out that your 'messengers' are rather ditzy?"

"I, um-" Ring stammered slightly, caught entirely off-guard by the revelation. "Interesting times, indeed."

* * *

_Gods below, she wasn't kidding!_ Ring found herself shrinking back against a wall in the conference room, trying not to get sucked into the calamity unfolding in front of her. The fun began immediately after Nova arrived and Irm buttonholed her in a corner to ask about her role in history.

"So, how much of the legends were true? Can you tell me what actually happened at the Ragnarok?"

"Why are you asking her?" Ranko butted in. "I am the one who wore the designation of 'Ragnarok', not her."

"He means the actual Ragnarok," Nova replied, which earned her a glare from Ranko.

"What are you talking about? I _am_ an actual Ragnarok. Well, was anyway," came Ranko's reply. Meanwhile, Irm had already made his exit from the conversation, relying on instincts honed over dozens of confrontations to save himself from becoming collateral damage as the girls argued.

"Ladies, while I'm sure your respective footprints upon this world's mythology would prove fascinating to the appropriate audience, this gathering is no such thing, so please _sit down _and _shut up,_ before I become compelled to render you prostrate and silent." Satori delivered her ultimatum in a sharply polite tone of voice that only served to heighten the threat of violence, and was sufficient to get both Nova and Ranko to actually shadow-step to seats in the back row.

The conference room filled up quickly, with the entire Mitikahara contingent of the Puella Magi present, save Kyōko and Homura; also present were the commanding officers of the Constabulary's armored division, as well as Nitori and her workshop mechanics. Taken together, it was a packed house when Satori stepped up in front of the projection screen.

"As I am sure everyone on the front lines has noticed, the Divine Crusaders have been fielding greater numbers and more advanced Armored Frames. Rectifying this situation has been my number-one goal since our battles began, and today I am pleased to announce a solution is in hand." Here, Satori waved at the screen, which brought up a display of an Armored Frame the likes of which none in the room had ever seen before, a slender and sculpted humanoid form with a scowling tigerish mask of a face, crowned by a golden **V** emblem. "Yes, those specs are real, and no, I haven't Wished away the laws of physics to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Huckbein."

"Not that the numbers don't look good," Sayaka frowned at the screen as she spoke. "But when will we actually have some to use? Those things have got to be expensive, and how are we going to get the flight capability?"

"There's a full squad-set sitting at the Annex right now, ready to go, along with the tooling to set up our own production run. For that, we have Mao-san and the Tesla-Leicht Institute to thank. They did most of the heavy lifting on the design. For right now, we'll be using standard weapons with the Huckbein, but there are new armaments in the works, to take advantage of the advantages of the new chassis." A new slide popped up, showing schematics of the new weapons.

"Is that a- pardon me, not trying to be the spoilsport," Sayaka scrubbed at her hair nervously when she realized that all eyes had turned her way. "But is that a _yo-yo_?"

"Ask your colleague about the value of a yo-yo sometime, Miki-san." Satori replied with a smirk as she pointed to Charlotte, who stuck her tongue out at Sayaka. "The main purpose of that particular device is binding and capturing enemy units, but it looks to be capable of landing a killing blow on regular Lions at the least. Anyway, moving right along, we'll be holding compatibility tests starting tomorrow-" Just then, the door burst open, admitting Nue in something like a panic.

"Satori, we need to stop the meeting and call a lockdown _right now_!"

"Would you care to explain why?" Satori turned a scowl upon the intruder. "Or perhaps I should contact Miko, tell her you've slipped your leash again?"

"I can't! Not here, anyways." Nue was practically bouncing off the ground as she pleaded. "Please, just trust me!"

"Funny that you should mention trust, as you're asking for an awful lot from me."

"Right, fine, your funeral." Nue replied, deflating a bit. "I found evidence that somebody hacked a back door into your computer network. There's a spy in the building."

"Wait, what's this about a spy?!" Ring shot to her feet, preempting the general rout by about half a second.

"Come to my office." Satori beckoned Ring forward. "The rest of you may not leave the building, but you are otherwise free to go about your business."

"Wait, what about Kyōko and Homura," _the bastards! _Sayaka asked, keeping the latter bit to herself, or at least to the empathic link.

"Tell them to come back immediately then. No sense in letting them frolic freely while the rest of you are cooped up here, is there?" Satori smiled as she spoke.

"No, no there is not," replied Sayaka, fuming.

"Okay, what is all this business about a spy?" Ring asked again, as soon as the door to the office was closed tightly.

"We detected an intrusion in our computer systems earlier." Satori replied evenly. "Thank you, Nue, for bringing it to my attention, and playing your part so well out there." Ring then watched as Satori turned and seemed to address the empty air. "Well?"

"I didn't detect any guilty consciences out there, or any effort to block us out," came the reply, and afterward the speaker appeared once she opened her eyes.

"Thank you, sister, although I was rather hoping one of them was the culprit. Just once, I'd like something around her to be easy and straightforward."

"Two questions, if I may," Ring butted in, holding up two fingers as her request from the Terror of the Press Room. Satori snorted in amusement and nodded assent, so Ring pushed forward. "First, you said this spy was in your computers? So, before we arrived, yes?"

"That is correct. I sense there's more of a story there?" Satori asked in return.

"I'll get to that in a minute. Second question, what in the hell?" Ring pointed at Koishi. "Where I come from, people don't just fade in like the damned Cheshire Cat, and what did she mean by 'detect'?"

"Your suave friend might be of more use explaining the details, but the short story is, there aren't just space aliens hiding behind the curtains in this operation. All three of us are youkai, which gives us a leg up on our enemies, enough so that they hired mages of their own to even the odds."

"Am I in over my head here?" Ring muttered. It wasn't quite a rhetorical question, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

"Oh, cheer up. I haven't started calling in favors from the deities I know yet."

"Interesting times," Ring sighed. It was beginning to become a refrain, to go along with the headache that was forming behind her eyes. "But I suppose we should deal with _my_ spy problem while we're at it."

* * *

Satori stalked through the workshop, feeling nauseated by the outcome of the sting upstairs. _It would have been so much better if one of them had been the culprit! _Logically, Satori knew that infiltration was always a possibility, indeed she had been on-guard for such an event from Day 1, but _knowing_ that it had occurred was far worse than simply fearing that it _might_ happen. The difference was simple; every single other person in the building was now a potential enemy, and the stress of having to think that way was terribly destructive. Just thinking about it made Satori's blood boil, and for a minute she worried that her powers had backfired, that her Third Eye was now broadcasting her dark thoughts outwards, such was the way her employees were scattering before her baleful gaze.

"So, care to explain to me what exactly you mean by 'your' spy problem, and why we're in my workshop?" Satori finally asked, once her patience had expired.

"Better if I show you, and we're here because my cargo was sent here." Ring replied. "This one." The case Ring indicated seemed to be just one more of the sturdy wheeled cargo pods that had been in the Skylifter, but this one began rattling when the executive put her key to the lock, and the reason was readily obvious; inside was a young man with wavy blonde hair and rakish good looks that hadn't been diminished by a rather battering ride in the pod.

"You might consider slapping a 'live lobster' sticker on this container, if you're going to insist on carting me around inside of it." the man muttered, but he made no attempt to get up, mainly because his hands were shackled behind his back, which left him without the leverage to escape confinement.

"Perhaps the ride has loosened your tongue?" Ring asked, glaring at her prisoner.

"Well, yes it has, but only to properly curse out the club-footed baboons who have been moving me about. Honestly! I hope you didn't have anything valuable in any of the other pods, miss, for they're surely battered into junk by now!"

"Nice to see we're not the only ones who attract the weird ones," Satori mused. "What's his story?"

"Ratsel Feinsmecker." Ring gave the man's name, and cut off his own attempt to speak. "He jumped the fence while we were loading the cargo, which is what earned him these accommodations. Resourceful, I'll give him that. Claims to know a lot of things about the DC, but he wants a posting to an Armored Frame unit as his 'ransom' for the information."

"I take it the name doesn't check out?" Satori asked.

"Hah! Not even a little bit; it translates as 'Mystery Gourmet', which has got to be either the weakest or the most brazen cover I've ever heard of." Ring paused as thought came to her. "Actually, considering what you showed me earlier, maybe you could do some digging, find out just what his damage is."

"Perhaps." Satori turned her glare on Ratsel, but shook her head after a minute. Turning her back on the captive, Satori pulled Ring in close so she wouldn't be overheard. "He has a surprisingly strong will. It's going to take a long time to break through and get anything useful, and frankly, I'm too drained from recent events to make a go of it right now. I'd put my sister on it, but Nova has been monopolizing her time lately. I got about all the use I can get of her for the scan earlier."

"Surely this takes priority?"

"In a sane world, yes, but those two are quite well matched, in that they're both fools." Satori shook her head. "However, all is not lost- Captain Miki _is_ the chief of the local police, we can always do this the old-fashioned way."

Daichi Miki was more than happy to help with the interrogation, mainly because it meant he no longer had to be in the same room as Nue. "What kind of youkai _is_ she, exactly?" Daichi asked, while Satori led him to the makeshift interrogation room she had assembled.

"Chimera, at least that's what it says on the tin. More precisely than that, I don't know, but I gathered that was the point. Is that sufficient information?"

"I was mainly wondering if she had any bit of hound in her, the way she growled at us when we tried to take a look at the computer systems. Though to be honest, we don't have a terribly good computer forensics team, so she's welcome to it."

"I wouldn't spend too much time contemplating forensics, or other criminal-justice matters either, in regards to this situation. There's a perfectly good river running past the Annex where a body can be disposed of." Satori growled.

"I understand your concerns, and if it were my department that suffered a breach like this, I imagine I would be in the same place as you are now, but what if . . ." Captain Miki took a hard breath. "What if it happens to be someone thinking they could 'help' by setting up a sting operation or the like?"

"You're worried about your household decreasing in size by 1, which is perfectly understandable, given the nature of those two." Satori narrowed her eyes as she turned to regard Daichi. "If your theory turns out to be true, I'm still shooting the culprit in the head and throwing her body in the river. With any luck, either the bullet or the swim home will cure her of such flights of foolishness. However, at this point I must bid you farewell; I need to get back to the hacking operation, if only to learn my bad news firsthand for a change." Captain Miki nodded his understanding, and headed off to start his own investigative process.

When she reached the office where the counter-intrusion efforts were being run, Satori was greeted by a sarcastically cheerful Nue, who offered "good news, bad news, and worse news".

"Bad news and also worse news? Is that all? I expected there to be something truly terrible in store." Satori deadpanned.

"Yes, well, the relative quality of the good news makes up for it." Nue took a breath before continuing. "The good news is, our intruder hasn't sent anything out. Whoever it is is probably angling for an exfiltration by the DC, so they'll have the data stored on physical media somewhere- and before you ask, no, it's not worth trying to search for it, as what was taken will fit on a standard memory stick, and those are about as common as breathable air.

"The bad news, is what they did get- the Huckebein specs, among other things."

"I . . . see." Satori grimaced. "If that's your bad news, what's the worse news?"

"The worse news is that the back-door account was named 'Polonius Chamberlain', which is a blatant as hell reference, specifically to a play written by some guy named Shakespeare if you were curious. I say that's the worse news because it shows that our intruder has nothing but contempt for the security set-up here. We're dealing with a professional-grade asshole here, Satori."

"That doesn't particularly narrow the field, unfortunately." Satori sighed.

* * *

"Oh come on! What kind of cruel and inhuman punishment is this?" Ratsel railed at his captors. By prison standards, the strange tag-along had pretty decent accommodations; one of the "emergency" mini-suites in Tirei Tower had been converted into a cell, a feat that was accomplished by replacing the door with one that had a small slot for passing items in and a peephole that looked in rather than out, as well as stripping out anything that could have been used for a tool. Captain Miki had come out of the first interview just shaking his head; Ring's spy was proving to be a very tough nut, indeed. Despite that, however, Ratsel had been a model prisoner- until mealtime.

"What'd'ya want, chump? We're not eating any better out here!" the guard replied, which wasn't strictly true; unlike the prisoner, he could go down to the cafeteria after his shift, but for now they were both eating plain rice.

"This! What's wrong with you people?" Finally, the man outside turned and looked through the peephole to see what had his prisoner so incensed. Ratsel was holding up the biodegradable spork that had been issued with his meal, which was chosen it would disintegrate after prolonged contact with moisture, rendering it useless as a weapon.

"It's. A. Spork. What's the matter with that?"

"What kind of heathen serves rice with a spork?" came the reply.

"Oh, for the love of- give it here!" The frustrated guard pushed the flap open, and once he had received the offending piece of tableware he shoved his chopsticks through, a set of the cheapest break-apart disposable kind. "There, is that better? Then shut up and eat!" Another curse from within the cell made the guard look again, to see that Ratsel had failed at breaking apart his chopsticks, with maybe three-quarters of one stick in one hand and the rest hanging off the other one. "Hah! Bad luck is what you get for making a fuss!" said the guard, calling out the common superstition involving broken chopsticks.

"Oh, we'll see about that," Ratsel muttered under his breath.

* * *

"Well, this is new . . ." Saya muttered, staring at the door that led to the guest quarters. Nominally a fire door, it had pried free of the magnetic latches and closed, then emblazoned with the words "PIS OFF" in spray paint, and as Saya discovered when she attempted to shove the door open, barricaded shut. Of course, given the haphazard nature of the markings, Saya knew who was responsible for the situation if not who in particular had done the actual barricading, and so she activated her bracelet and called on the direct link function, which involved turning the bezel until it "felt" like she was addressing her target. Like most of the things she had been exposed to since leaving Uminari, Saya had no clue how it was actually supposed to work, but it did, and that was good enough for the moment.

"Hotaru, what the hell, over?"

"_What what the hell?_" came the reply from the braclet. "_And I don't remember saying you could call me on this thing!"_

"Okay, look; I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I got escorted home from my after-school study session by armed guards, who were looking at me like I was the _enemy_ this time. I want in to my room, which is on the other side of this idiot barricade you've put up. If the door isn't open in 30 seconds, I'm going down to the workshop and I'm going to steal a _Gespenst_, and then I'm going to punch the door open, and _then_ I'm going to rip your guts out and feed 'em to your girlfriends until they choke, got it?"

"_Hey, did somebody mention food?_" came the reply from the other end of the line, from a voice that wasn't Hotaru's. Whatever the firefly had been planning to say was drowned out in a chatter of conversation, and then the link cut off, leaving Saya to stare at the door in utter disbelief. After counting to 30 in her head, and then counting to 30 again, Saya had made the decision to carry out at least the punching-down-the-door part of her threat when her ears were assaulted by a horrible grinding, screeching sound and then the door popped open and disgorged a veritable horde of girls.

"Okay, what was that noise?" This came from Renko, who had burst out of the room she shared with Maribel, sounding not quite panicked but definitely unsettled.

"Hotaru was just removing the barricade," Charlotte supplied.

"Ah, okay." Renko replied, and turned to go back to her room when the her brain managed to fully unpack the statement. "Wait, what?! What barricade?"

"It's, uh, kinda a long story. We're going down to raid the kitchen, wanna come along and we'll explain on the way?"

"Uh . . . Sure, why not? Hey, Merry, dinner?" Renko called back, and got a mumbled affirmative, and so the "raiding party" increased by two. Along the way, it became obvious that all was not well in Tirei Tower- between the constables patrolling the halls, the scowling employees, and the general gloom and doom, it managed to shake even the more thickheaded members of the group.

"Okay, I was at the meeting where they announced the lockdown, but jeez! Why is everything such a mess already?" Cirno grumbled, but only once the group was out of earshot of any of the patrols.

"Wait, what lockdown?" Saya asked, along with Renko.

"The daemon spectre of treachery lurks within this sanctuary!" Ranko snarled, and the fury in her voice was startling to her companions.

"Are you alright?" Charlotte asked, reaching out a friendly hand, but then shying back as if she had been burned by reaching for the other girl.

"No. I am _not_ alright, and I shall not _be_ alright. We in the Project are intended to be of single purpose, and fulfilling that purpose is intended to be our singular joy. I was- I _am-_ of the Purifier Directive. My purpose should be to root out such corruption and destroy it."

"So why are you standing here whining?" This came from Rumia, and Ranko turned to the Shadowfiend, eyes glimmering with pain. "Yeah, yeah, not nice, I know. I don't do nice, never have. Actually, that's kinda my point. You and I, we both were changed by the last Incident, on the same freakin' day even . . . I think. Somebody get a calendar and check that, if you're just going to stand around with your jaws hanging open.

"Having my seal removed changed what I look like, but it didn't change _who_ I am, in here." Rumia thumped a fist over her heart for emphasis. "It took me a long time to come to terms with that, and I don't think I'm done yet, but that's not important right now. The point is, nobody can take away who you are unless you let them do it. You want to go find this spy? Then let's go. Satori probably won't say 'no' to some extra help, and she can't stop us even if she does." With that said, Rumia grabbed Ranko's hand and started to pull her towards the elevators, before stopping as she thought of one other thing. "But I call dibs on getting to chop the asshole to bits if they fight back!"

"Oh, quit reveling in it, you're getting your smug all over the carpet!" Hotaru smacked Charlotte across the back of the head as the latter watched the red-eyed pair march off.

"Meanwhile, food?" Saya asked, after her stomach made a noise indicating it was about to implode into a black hole. Upon arriving in the cafeteria, however, it seemed like the gang's hope of acquiring provisions might be doomed- there was already a group in the kitchens, and it sounded like a battle was about to erupt.

"No, you put that down, you've already had your dinner, you damned delinquent!" Sayaka shouted, slapping Kyōko's hands away from a tray of freshly-rolled sushi.

"Yeah, and?" was the redhead's response as she tried to sneak a hand onto the plate. "I'm still hungry, so there!"

"Then you should have eaten more while you were on your fucking _date_!"

"Well, I would have, but somebody decided we had to come home 'immediately if not sooner', just so we can spend more sitting around in time out. And besides, it wasn't a date."

"Oh, really now?" Sayaka posted her fists on her hips. "So what would you call it, then?"

"Gee, I dunno, being nice to a friend? That's still allowed, isn't it? Besides, if we were really doing something we shouldn't have been, wouldn't Pinkie be pissed at Homerun too?"

"Oh, that's not even fair, and you know it! Madoka's such a squish, she wouldn't get angry if you set her on fire-" Sayaka's tirade was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder, and she turned around to see Madoka looking at her with an expression about halfway to the "Pinkie pout" Kyōko was dreading earlier. "Er, uh, hi."

"For the record, I would too be upset if somebody set me on fire, because then I'd have to go buy new clothes," Madoka deadpanned, causing crackles of laughter from around the room, while Sayaka felt her ears burn with embarrassment.

"Is it safe to come in now?" Charlotte made a big production out of curling her fingers around the doorframe and peeking in as she asked the question.

"Sure thing, Charlotte-san. These two are done fighting _where they could spill the food_," Youmu replied, leaning on the hilt of her katana.

"Uh, yeah. Definitely done!" Kyōko and Sayaka replied together, moving swiftly to be away from the table and out of the reach of the phantom swordswoman. Charlotte motioned for her friends to come in, and there they discovered just what an epic spread had been put out.

"Wow! What's all this for?" Cirno cried out, jaw on the floor.

"We thought we'd try a terrorist act of our own," Mami explained cheerfully.

"What she means is, we're not letting Satori have any of this until she unlocks the doors." Akiko supplied. "Me, I'd settle for getting credit towards our Home Ec courses for helping out with all this. Mami's a megalomaniac in the kitchen."

"And in the bedroom," Madoka added, which immediately got all eyes on her. "Or so Kyōko-chan wanted to say," Madoka added with an impish grin, before the rest of the assembled crowd had finished their gasps of shock. "Sayaka-chan, please don't kill her, I only said it because Kyōko-chan was biting her tongue so hard that I thought she might bite it off, and that effort would go to waste if you ripped her head completely off, wouldn't it?"

"Okay, fine, but I still say you shoulda let her bite her tongue off, so the rest of us have a chance to eat at least." Sayaka mock-grumped, but her kiss on Kyōko's cheek proved that the storm was over for now.

"Are you really sure you still want to make a Contract?" Saya asked Hotaru as they grabbed plates and queued up. "You'd be permanently linked to these lunatics, you know?"

"Uhh, I'll get back to you on that," Hotaru replied, looking dazed.

Ranko and Rumia arrived at the kitchen in time to get in on the "Round 1" pass at the buffet, with Rumia looking disgruntled. "So, I take it she didn't take you up on your offer?" Charlotte asked, taking the lead as usual.

"Oh no, she did, the wretch," Rumia said, grinding her teeth. "We get to screen the 3rd shift, so somebody pass the coffee."

"At the risk of going more insane, Rumia, you're the, uh, Shadowfiend or whatever, right? Why are you complaining about being up at night?" Saya asked, visibly bracing herself for another lesson in the unfathomable ways of the Nineballs.

"Because I'm more of a morning person. Casting darkness on somebody doesn't really do much when they already can't see."

"That and _she_ can't see in the dark either," Cirno added, which earned her a swat upside the head from Ranko. "Hey, what the hell? When did you two hook up that you're willing to do her dirty work?"

"We have not 'hooked up', as such; I merely noticed Rumia was about to throw a scone at you, and intervened on behalf of the pastry."

"Okay, but you owe me half. That actually hurt!" Cirno grumbled. Ranko nodded, and liberated the scone from Rumia's plate, then broke it in half.

"Mmph?" Saya mumbled around a bite of food when she realized that more eyes were on her than on the antics with Cirno.

"You just put cream cheese on a pretzel." Hotaru stated in a disgusted tone of voice.

"So?"

"So that's fucked up! Like, Ranko levels of fucked up."

"I was not aware that I had been enshrined in the SI?" Ranko replied, looking dubiously at the firefly. "Although Saya does appear to have created a fit offering to place on the altar of Darkness."

"Uh-huh," Saya grunted, looking at her snack as though it were now poisonous. "Anyway, even if it is weird, one, why does that matter, and two, who died and made you the Culinary Inquisition?"

"It's just weird, is what I'm saying," Hotaru fumed. Instead of a reply, Saya swept a hand around, indicating the gathered Nineballs as a unit.

* * *

"This makes about as much sense as peanut butter and jelly," Alchemie wrinkled her nose as she looked at the equipment being assembled in the belly of _Orcus_. "You don't seriously think scattershot is going to work on them do you? I know I've been pressing the importance of not burning up your Soul Gem, but let me reemphasize; it takes an awful lot of damage to take out a Puella Magi." The renegade Incubator let a handful of the ferrous marbles trickle through her fingers as she glared at Valcyone. "If you want to put them down, you're going to want to blow big huge holes in them, not the pinpricks that this stuff will cause."

"Let me worry about that, will you? The important question is, can you lead an attack against Tirei? I need it to be ferocious, and I need it to be unrelenting."

"Chew before swallowing, yes, I understand." Alchemie replied. "I just hope my prediction is correct and the defector is one of their Puella Magi, so I have something to rebuild with when this is all done. What about the, er, special help?"

"I'm taking them with me for this one. You get quantity, I get quality this time." Valcyone stated, grinning.

"Uh-huh. And people call me messed up," Alchemie frowned. "How soon?"

"Not long now, all we need is for the eyes in the sky to be out of our way. Couple-three days, looks like."

_So that's it then . . ._ Alchemie wondered, burying her thoughts deep within, lest she accidentally "leak" them through her telepathy. _In less than a week, this will all be over, one way or the other._


End file.
